Hearts and Monsters
by Willofthewisp
Summary: Picking up right where "An Awfully Big Adventure" left off, Season 4 from the eyes of Killian Jones as he embarks on the future he's chosen. CS.
1. Initiation

**A/N: Welcome! Putting up the disclaimer now that I do not own the show or the characters.**

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><p>"...maybe you do not understand. You see, turning pages will bring us to the end of this book, and there is a monster at the end of this book..."<p>

Snippets of conversation alternate between faint and distinct. Snow's lively reading of a children's book to Neal, _Neal_, gives way to Swan's voice, as all things tend to do, as she thinks out loud to Marian about heading to the station first thing in the morning to track down the woman's family. As hard as it had been to pull away from each other and head inside back to the party, the sudden bite in the air had been enough to make him wonder if Storybrooke is alive somehow, the magic permeating throughout the town sensing something and adjusting the weather accordingly.

Thinking about the next calamity when Emma's sitting next to you sipping her hot chocolate, he asks himself. Relax, Killian. He glances over at her since one would think the Savior would notice if something was up before he would, but her focus is on Marian...with her eyes darting ever so slightly in his direction, he notices with a smirk.

"The Evil Queen?" Marian asks, sheer panic on her face. Ah, that explains the chill, he thinks with a silent laugh.

"Wait. It's okay!" Emma springs up with her hand held out. "She's different now. She's not the same person anymore. You'll see. I'll...just stay here."

Not sure if he would have done that. The images of Regina storming into the ball wearing her murderous expression still stirred in his mind. Again, he has to shrug off some looming feeling. To Regina, all that happened almost thirty years ago.

"...she still thinks of you as..."

"Evil," Regina finishes for her, resignation heavy in her voice.

"I'm going to bring her over. I already told her that it's okay, but it's a little...delicate, and I feel like if she met you, she'll see."

"I understand."

Well, all right. He looks back over at Marian at the same time Emma returns to him, her hand on his shoulder. Thank your lucky stars, lass, he thinks as Marian inhales on her way up. That's as accommodating as it gets when it comes to Regina. Who knows? Maybe the two of them will slip into conversation, Regina will know precisely where the woman's family lives and, in an effort to be gracious, offer to show her the way, thus freeing up _someone's _day for other activities.

He watches Swan introduce her from his stool, trying to make it as far from awkward as possible.

"Regina, I'd like you to meet-"

"Marian?"

Robin leaps out of his seat as if it had been set on fire. There's no time to ponder how some woodsman thief knows her—one more utterance of her name enough to put anyone in the know.

"Robin?"

"I thought you were dead! I thought I'd never see you again!" He chokes on his words, gathering Marian to him and holding her with a vengeance.

Killian stills, his eyes somehow stuck on the unlikely reunion unfolding right before them that now includes...bloody hell...their child, stuck on Regina's cut reaction, and stuck on Swan's back. Rigid.

"You. You did this?" Regina's words, so full of accusation, hone in both his and Emma's concentration, her form snapping toward the other woman's direction.

"I just..wanted to save her life..."

"You're just like your mother. Never thinking of consequences!" Every noise in the background hushes as Regina's voice rises, himself even flinching.

"I didn't know," she tries.

"Of course you didn't! Well, you just better hope to hell you didn't bring anything else back!" Her jaw would unhinge from her skull if it could, the way she was setting it. She lifts her hands, fingers tensed into talons and for a split second, he's ready to jump off of the stool and deflect a ball of fire. Instead, she closes her eyes and charges right for the door.

Swan glances back at him, but it's too quick for him to tell her to hold off. She's out the door right after her. Robin takes Marian by the hand, her other one holding their son by the wrist... Now he jumps off the stool, weaving around guests to get to the door.

"Go ahead. We're right behind you."

He looks over his shoulder to find David close behind with a protective arm around Henry, Snow doing the baby equivalent for Neal.

"Good. You've learned to not waste time asking what's going on," he snaps.

"I'd say it's pretty obvious. Did you know? Did she know?"

"No."

David hustles over to him and gestures his head at the door, a request to go out first. It's easy to catch sight of Emma's hair in the slats between the blinds, off to the side of this family drama...love triangle...victims from beyond the grave...thing.

"Is everything okay?" Snow bustles as best she can out the door first, and even he doesn't have the heart to snark her attempt at diplomacy will fall on deaf ears, not when she's got her babe in her arms.

"No one's been incinerated yet, so that's a good sign," David half-sings, half-sighs.

"Regina, are you all right?"

All the confusion and emotions and rage prompt more words out of Marian than she had spoken all throughout their trip through the forest with her, being knocked out for some of it notwithstanding.

"Mom, what's going on?" Henry tries.

"She's a monster!" Marian snarls at her. Once again, he attempts to take in an alert scan of his entire surroundings, watching Regina strain herself to not lash out, on their little boy who must be confused out of his mind...and then everyone disperses. Marian drags their son off in one direction as Regina marches toward the street with her head down.

"Regina!" Emma calls after her. He catches her arm just as she takes a step.

"No. No good has ever come from pushing that woman. Give her space," he says.

"It's what she does in that space I'm worried about," David murmurs.

"You don't think she'll become evil again." Henry tries so hard to state it, not ask it, but only Emma makes an attempt to answer, albeit a silent one. She wraps her arm around his back, listening to him talking, hoping, that Regina's come too far, and sharing his hope. She had indeed come far as the lad pointed out, even if that was only to assuage his own fears, but far enough. That was the question.

It leaves them standing outside, the nip in the air sharper than ever. More and more people join them, carrying leftovers, balloons, and bags, muttering to David and Snow their thanks for being invited to the party. Enough eye rolls and uneven voices let everyone know the damper on the festivities is a lethal one, but Snow glances down at Neal and musters a smile.

"Well, I think that's enough excitement for someone this evening," she says, and Killian laughs at himself, realizing he'd actually missed that cheerful yet knowing tone of hers no one seemed quite able to duplicate. Mother and daughter give each other a lingering hug, a few hushed exchanges of being asked to come home with them and a relieved but less than enthusiastic acceptance of the invitation. Swan's hand whips up to Henry's head to tousle his hair.

"Come on, kid. Granny's probably ready for us to check out."

About to follow her in, he blinks at shadows crossing over the exterior of Granny's. Short shadows. He turns and finds Leroy and, and, one of the other ones. Leroy staggers back a few steps before gaining enough momentum to give him a jovial slap on the arm.

"Where'd you go?" he shouts, piercing the night. "Did you even get to have a good time? One minute everyone's here boozing and having fun and the next time I look around and see you, Regina's making a scene."

"I had a good time tonight, I can assure you," Killian says, making sure his tone is hushed. He shifts toward the door, shuffling, but Leroy's hand is still on his arm.

"I mean, it's what she _does_! Every time we have a party, there is something going on with that woman! So, the boys and I were thinking, let's round up whoever's left and...I don't know! Can go out to the fields and shoot at cans as a last resort. You in?"

"Leroy," he clears his throat and, biting his lip, he suppresses his grin. He scratches behind his ear, not knowing what else to do. "How much have you had tonight?"

"Enough to where I get to drive the car," the other dwarf mumbles.

"Don't listen to him! Look, Mary Margaret and David are out. Kid's gonna eat and poop all night."

"They wouldn't come out anyway," the other dwarf argues with a yawn. Leroy casts him a disgruntled look. It's not worth finding an irritation, Killian thinks. Being surrounded by inebriated dwarfs, and not the first time, and Regina potentially wreaking havoc, and yet he'd rather just smile, laugh, run his tongue over his lips and pretend it comes close to what Emma does to them. He stops shuffling.

"Sorry, mate. My business is elsewhere."

He can still catch her on the landing. It's striking, really, how quickly the bustling sounds of clearing dishes and moving boxes in the diner gives way to the quiet of the inn section. He passes the soft pink glow of the sitting room and tromps up the stairs two at a time to find the door next to his wide open with familiar-looking luggage propped up against it.

"Hey," Emma says when she sees him, her lips pressing together. "Another successful evening."

"One might think the place setting fire would have driven everybody out slower," he agrees, rolling his tongue around in his mouth, watching Henry folding up a few items of clothing.

"So I guess that was Maid Marian...and she's no longer our problem..."

"Do you want to go get a drink?" he blurts out, cringing the second it's out of his mouth. It's a look of surprise that responds to it. At least it isn't that damned look of terror he used to get all the time in Neverland. But it's still too apparent he's taken her aback.

"Oh...thanks, but we're kind of moving back in with my parents." She laughs. "Never thought I'd say that. We'll, we'll talk, uh, hang out sometime tomorrow. Right?"

Story of his life as of late.

"Right, love."

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><p>The diner opened to a mere handful of people. Granny remained behind the counter, not much for chitchat when a cool efficiency was more necessary. He sips his coffee and blocks out the muffled orders from the customers as they scatter to various booths and tables with movements that seem sluggish and deliberate at the same time.<p>

"Hi."

He sets down his mug and raises an eyebrow at Henry, his casual smile and the red stripes on his scarf breaths of life on such a dismal morning. He had kept a weather eye out for Swan to show up for breakfast. Well, to be honest, he had kept an even more weather eye for her to show up in the middle of the night, but he'd known that for the long shot that it was.

Henry, however, was always a welcomed surprise.

"Hello, lad."

"My mom wanted me to drop this off for you," he says, holding out one of those phones everyone seemed to have. Small, gray—ought to be a piddling thing to take and yet he barely lifted his fingers to touch it. Come now, it's a bloody gift and the boy's waiting for you to say something.

"Thank you, but I'm afraid I don't know much about operating one of these."

"She said you'd say that, so I'm here to show you," he assures him with a casual shrug and slides into the booth across from him gesturing for the phone. Taking it back, Henry holds it out between them like he's presenting it to some child.

"This button here turns it on. You'll leave it on all the time, but if it shuts off, just come to us and we'll show you how to charge it."

Charge it?

"You'll hit this button next, and where it says 'Emma?' That's how to call her, so you then hit the button there that has a phone on it."

"It doesn't resemble this phone at all."

"Um, other than that, are you with me so far?"

"Only one way to find out." He motions for the phone and peers down at a series of numbers underneath Emma's name. "What's this then?"

"That's my number."

He feels a smile cross his face, widening into a grin. For a moment, he just gazes at the two entries on the screen. He flashes his smile at Henry before following the instructions and, judging by how a disembodied voice directs him to "please wait while his party is being reached" before blaring some music his way, the first attempt thus far is a successful one.

"So you got it working," he hears, the corners of his mouth turning upward. Flashing a look at Henry, he mellows his grin into something a little more conversational...whether she can see it or not. There's a bit of a laugh in her tone, too.

"Does that surprise you?"

"I _should _say no, but I don't think your ego needs any more stroking," she says. His bottom lip runs along his top one, debating how much innuendo he could get away with while in Henry's presence, but she continues. "Regina hasn't come into Granny's, has she?"

"So much for giving her some time then?" he asks, stealing a quick look at Henry. The boy had lowered his head onto his arms, looking past their booth toward the door, wistful and resigned.

"It's just that I walked Henry over to her house this morning and her car was gone and she's not at her office either. You don't think..." she trails off and he can hear a hard swallow. "You don't think she would do something drastic? Maybe not drastic to any of us, but drastic to herself? You know what? Don't answer that because I'm tired and there's not really any way you can even answer that without tipping Henry off to what we're talking about. We're going to walk around a little bit and see if we see her."

"Did you try the vault?"

"Kind of hard for Henry to not know what we're talking about now, huh?"

"Tell her it's okay. She's just trying to not worry me." Henry sits back up, his interest piqued. "I think walking around's a good idea."

"He says he finds walking around a good idea, and if you would accept some assistance, I could go down to the vault for you."

Dead silence widens his eyes, sends his tongue running over his teeth in his mouth as he tries to recall if he'd hit a button with his cheek or something to end the talking. Opening his mouth to check, he hears a sharp intake of breath.

"You're volunteering to walk right up to a magical den in the middle of a cemetery that belongs to a woman who probably wouldn't care if she fried you to a crisp?" There's something in Emma's voice—the words and final inflection on the sardonic side, but her voice quivers.

"Not walk right up, Swan. Walk by with a cursory glance," he reassures her. She breathes a sigh into the phone, the little puff of air something he's a little more used to than the nervous mumbling she'd succumbed to just a moment ago.

"You can if you want," she says with such a forced nonchalance he can visualize the shrug that undoubtedly accompanied it. "Have Henry sit tight and we'll come pick him up."

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><p>What did he, or any of them, really, know about Regina? The question jogs at a pace in his mind that is both leisurely and unrelenting. Perhaps the persistent chill in the air has something to do with it, but he remains unable to answer it even after a brisk walk to the cemetery and back. An extreme woman, certainly, he'd known her to plot murder on a mass scale just so she could be alone with her son. Cora notwithstanding, he only knew Regina at all due to her murderous rage at her own mother. And yet she'd aligned herself so steadfastly with the rest of them, had been such a key ingredient in surviving Pan, surviving Zelena. He ought to be able to predict what actions she would take after this period of solitude and yet, for today anyway, he had no choice but to write her off as unpredictable and simply hope for the best.<p>

Mid-morning, if Regina were up to something, it at least required planning, for had she chosen to reduce the town to smoldering ashes or something to that effect, she'd have done it by now. Rather everything looked so commonplace it created the illusion of disaster being impossible. Fortunately, he had spent enough time in Storybrooke to know differently.

Catching sight of pedestrians on the opposite side of the street, the bulky movements of a pram stand out among them. Quickening his pace, he nods as it is indeed Swan with her baby brother and family out and about. No sign of Regina, but if the Evil Queen can take a few hours to herself before getting back into the villain routine, then surely Swan can spare a few minutes.

"Swan!"

"Speaking of..." she mutters to her mother as he rushes up to them. They slow down, but don't stop for him.

"The mausoleum's all clear. Regina's not hiding there," he reports and he would by lying if he didn't expect some relief to show up on her face. Turning back to him, she smiles, but in that courteous and...gods, not this again..._dead _way before she continues her walk, stiff.

"Thanks," she says after a beat.

"Swan, are you avoiding me?" Patience, he reminds himself, suddenly unsure how he should move.

"Can you give us a minute?" she asks Snow. The latter formally backtracks the pram and resumes her walk in the opposite direction. He steps around it and onto the intersecting street, more closed off than the one they were just on. Swan glances back a few times at him.

"I'm not avoiding you. I'm just...dealing with...stuff," she says, cringing. Hopefully because it's as pitiful an excuse as it sounds, he thinks. "We have a crisis right now."

His head falls back into air, the muscles in his throat fighting back a grunt at how the definition of "crisis" has expanded into the single ignorance of where one heartbroken woman happened to be at the time.

"There is _always _a crisis," he groans with his eyes closed. Bloody hell, surely Emma Swan of all people knew a thing or two about not wanting to be found for a little while...and could stand to learn a thing or two about what to do once you've decided to let someone find you now and again. "Perhaps you should consider living a life during them. Otherwise, you might miss it."

Her mouth opens, but before she can even utter a sound, a panic-stricken "we're under attack!" echoes throughout the streets. Leroy. Had to be. No one else's voice carries quite like his. Setting his jaw, he'll have to be forgiven for not being all ears to this latest interruption.

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><p><strong>AN: The name of the book being read at the beginning is the children's classic _The Monster at the End of This Book _(starring lovable old Grover from _Sesame Street_). Special thanks to Killianhook on Youtube and to the SpringfieldSpringfield website for episode transcripts! This kind of fic just couldn't be done without them. Coming up? First texts and more ice. Lots more ice.**


	2. Black and White

Chasing after an ever-growing trail of ice doesn't leave time for speculation. All Killian can do other than replay Leroy's roaring account of his vess—car freezing is keep his eyes on it, glistening in the sun. It winds down the street and ends at a swinging door. They follow it to an odd assortment of junk, stacks of metallic and wooden objects strewn about like gigantic pieces of litter. Emma's drawn her gun, but he won't draw his sword just yet. A wooden fence encloses the little yard. No other door or gate and no notches or foot holes—they've backed it into a corner and, as useful and versatile his sword may be, close-quarter fighting with no discernible exit didn't feel like the best course of action.

He asserts himself behind Emma, keeping close watch as to the goings-on behind them. For a moment, it strikes him that it could be a ploy of some kind and the real threat lies outside, not in here. Piles after piles of the bric-a-brac and yet nothing stands tall enough to conceal a human being.

Emma stops suddenly, so he peers around her at the ice trail, a dead end with a swirling wind of snow flurries before them. The howling storm condenses into what could be the rocky outline of a giant human, but then it clears away leaving a hunched, gargantuan...snow monster in its wake.

"Well that's a new one," he murmurs. It grinds against the ground as it edges toward them, its growls growing louder.

"We don't want to pick a fight!" she tries with her hands out. The way it tightens its stance, still snarling, he's not sure it cares.

"Swan..."

"I just want to see what it wants," she whispers back to him, steeling herself for a confrontation. The snow monster seems even larger than before, clenching its fist. A sudden roar erupts out of it like a blizzard, blowing both of them to the ground. He lands flat on his back, Swan right on top of him, and the monster's bellows not stopping.

There's barely time for even a quick look at each other. Scrambling to their feet, they take off through the door back onto the street.

It's impossible to not look back, and not to see if they've lost it. The thudding footsteps, biting cold surrounding it, and its roars more than enough evidence that indeed they have not even begun to outrun it. Almost colliding with Leroy and his friend, he takes advantage of the opportunity to catch his breath and look back at the thing tearing it way through the infrastructure.

"Evil snowman!" Leroy announces in his ear-splitting way, and he can't blame the passers-by from starting a frenzy. They scatter in all directions screaming and shrieking. It seems to disinterest the monster, however.

"I think the noise is scaring it," Swan notes, watching it turns its back to all the potential bloodshed and tromp away. "It's headed for the forest."

David's caught up to them and all it takes is one look before the three of them chase after it, again allowing no time to think where it came from, what conjured it. Try, he tells himself, puffing just a little as they speed to an incline on their way into the woods. As far as he had seen, Regina worked in fire...as well as the odd poison here and there, but never ice, and even if she had decided it was the opportune time to change elements, that didn't explain the trail of ice, or the car. Or, for that matter, why it didn't just knock Swan to the ground and do away with her from the beginning. Why all the growling beforehand? No. This wasn't some manifestation of hate. He almost stopped in his tracks at the thought it was actually more akin to fear than anything else.

Almost.

Robin and his men camped in the woods, had since the curse had brought them here. They couldn't be too far from this opening in the foliage. Maybe they could help. Or add to the blind panic sweeping the town. At this point it was a toss-up.

"Why didn't we just drive out here and head it off?" David panted next to him.

"Big yellow Beetle's easier to squash!" she yelled back to her father and thank the gods what looked like tent poles appeared on the horizon. Speeding up to close the gap between himself and the Merry Men, he entered the camp with the rest of them and fought an irrational feeling of resentment at all of them, Marian included, just sitting there oblivious to all that was going on.

"What is it?" Robin springs up, Marian, the boy, and the others quickly following suit. David fumbles for the words.

"Some kind of...snow monster," David blurts with an unsure hand gesturing. Not so ridiculous when it's close to trampling you to death, he thinks, but Robin's promise of assistance is drowned out by crunching debris in the distance, hundreds of leaves crackling and twigs snapping under one footstep.

"It's getting closer. It's coming from the North." Precious little it does them, the monster stomping around into view.

"There!" The one who had been bitten by the flying monkeys fires an arrow despite Swan's protestations into the monster's shoulder, affecting it no more than any of them would be by swatting away a gnat.

"It only attacks when it feels threatened," he adds. Rather useless information now, he thinks. It already feels threatened and here they all are gathered in a row with weapons of every kind pointed right at it. "Pistol, sword, hook, my cunning wit—I don't think we have what it takes."

"Emma does," David breathes looking over at her. Of course.

"What?"

"Your magic, love."

"Right," she says with a sharp inhale. She looks down at her hands, a brief flash of fear in her eyes.

"You can do this," he says. The fear thaws into puzzlement, as if she's pondering how she'll dispatch it, and then a decisive head snap to meet the monster's eyes before her hands send out a blinding white disc of light that hurtles into it. It stops mid-step, addled, her naming it Frosty reassuring. They ought to try speaking to it now, but without warning, spikes shoot out of its back, thick icicles that match the smaller, but just as sharp, fangs protruding from its mouth.

"Really?" she cries out, from using her magic or the situation, he doesn't know, but he hopes it's the latter since another blast could at the very least buy them time.

A deafening roar overpowers him, the back of his head somehow the first thing hitting the cold hard ground. He sees nothing but swirling blackness at first, body fighting to not go completely unconscious.

It's not working...

It's a sudden quiet that jerks him out of whatever limbo his mind had been in...muffled voices, the soft scraping sounds of people staggering to their feet. His eyes flutter as he wakes with a shiver, remembering the cold burst of the monster...it's gigantic craggy paw hurling into Emma...

His head jolts up, looking for her, not breathing until he finds her heaving herself off the ground like everyone else.

"Maybe you're not a monster." It's Marian's voice. That much registers with him as he rubs the back of his head and takes in the sight of Regina and the lack of monster. It doesn't take deep philosophical conjecture to figure out what's happened; perhaps it would be prudent to give Regina the benefit of the doubt in the future. They spend the day searching for her and she turns up only to save their lives.

"Maybe I'm not," Regina murmurs, as if she too is rearranging her view of herself. "Welcome to Storybrooke, Marian." She gazes over at Robin with a twinge of longing breaking through the composure and, with her head high, he might add, she heads for the edge of the woods.

Emma hesitates for only a fraction of a second until her body pushes her forward.

"Regina, we've been trying to find you. We need to talk about-"

With a wave of her hands, nothing is left of Regina but a whirl of purple smoke.

* * *

><p>A few wry remarks from David concerning the paperwork protocol in regards to ice monsters falls on only polite ears, Swan barely smiling and not bantering back. He leaves the Merry Men standing around in their confusion and follows her to where the monster had stood, a few chunks of powdery snow its only remains. She stoops down and gathers some of it, rolling it around in her palms before tossing it into the tree trunks. Even with only her profile in view, he can tell she's tucked her lips into her mouth, brow's furrowed, stance and posture harried—perhaps in need of some levity. He creeps up as soundlessly as he can until he's only a few feet from her.<p>

"So, crisis averted," he announces to a face just as frustrated as before, but not entirely without amusement. Her little snort of laughter he takes as a sign she wants to let go of whatever thoughts were running through her head but questioned if that was a good idea.

"Now you want to go home and see what's on Netflix?" Tone, a bit sarcastic. Context, not a bloody clue.

"I don't know what that is, but sure!" He doesn't care that he's shuffling around, too many ideas requiring his concentration. Possibility wasn't something Killian Jones normally bothered with when it came to the day-to-day, but he has half a mind to ask her to hop on a boat with him and spend the day on the water and half a mind to start slowly and see about sharing a drink first before they tackle this Netflix.

She chuckles a bit at his reaction. "Killian, someone created that snowman. This isn't over."

"It never is." Gods, even after time traveling yesterday if someone had said he'd be running from the snowman from hell he'd have questioned their sobriety. But bloody hell, they were alone together, in a forest that was actually quite pretty when it didn't harbor a slew of threatening creatures, and the sun was shining and she's never more beautiful than when she's just laughed. She always looks so surprised after she's done so, completely in awe there was a reason to laugh in the first place. "All the more reason to enjoy the quiet moments, and right now..." He tugged on the hem of her jacket, not stopping until they were inches apart. "We have a quiet moment."

"I know," she whispers, pulling free just as her thin smile and quick glance at his lips had just convinced him she wouldn't. "I just got to do something."

Patience. Aye, but patience at what cost?

"Right. Of course. Go ahead." He shuffles and gestures, nerves revealing themselves through the frustration, and yet, a little voice in him keeps reassuring him it's all right to be frustrated this time. She's not going to give him that look of horror. She's not going to walk away. Liberated, with only a slight inhale, he lets himself continue. "Don't tell me you're not avoiding me anymore because I'm actually quite perceptive and this? This is avoiding me."

And sure enough, she isn't walking away. There's in fact an almost sheepish smile on her face as she stares at the ground to form her words.

"I know. I know I am. I just feel..." she trails off, but starts over again. "Right now I just feel too guilty."

"Over Regina?"

"She lost someone she really cares for because of me."

It's out of her mouth a little too quickly, her eyes averting contact just a little too much. Cocking his head, he apologizes to her in his head for needing to read her face, but he has too little to go on now. It doesn't matter, though. He can read her with such lightning speed by now it takes a fraction of a second to see there is something else she's not ready to discuss.

"No, there's more to this than just Regina, isn't there?" After all this time, the fact that some barrier still remains between himself and her trust is crushing, like a slow hard punch to the gut. Not trusting him enough—he didn't know what else it could be. She didn't trust him enough to talk about it with him and she didn't trust him enough to be, to be in whatever they are in.

She gives him a hesitant look, edging just a little closer to him until their lips touch, the softest brush that lingers just long enough for him to close his eyes.

"Be patient," she says, licking her lips after she's pulled away, a bit reluctantly, he notes.

"I have all the time in the world," he says to himself, watching her go. "Unless another monster appears and kills me."

* * *

><p>He spends the afternoon at Granny's, in his room, showered and eyeing the folded stack of clothing Granny placed on the corner of the bed.<p>

"What's all this?" he'd asked when he'd bustled up the stairs and was just about to place the key in the lock.

"Lounge pants and a t-shirt," she'd said in a curt, frank way, jostling the blue checked-patterned trousers that just looked like a loose fit with a matching blue shirt on top of them. "They've been in the Lost and Found a little too long. Don't worry. They're washed."

"Where were they before here?" he'd inquired out loud, pinching some of the fabric between his fingers. It was so cottony it felt as though he could peel off a layer of it.

"Judging from how long they've been here, that's more a question for Ruby," she'd scoffed, and then, with a tilt of her head, she widened her eyes. "Look, I don't know what you were sleeping in before and I don't want to know. It's for helping get rid of that damn witch and I won't take no for an answer."

So that was how they wound up on the foot of his bed, a folded-up square of masculinity amid the pink fluffy quilts and the floral wallpaper. With his arms behind his head, he sinks deeper into the comforter and guesses at a price on the "space heater" on the television.

He'd given up on taking notes on the, the "filmed" play that was on; how else would he have been able to pay attention? It seemed too good to be a true, a play that seemed intended for someone like him, new to this world. An announcer described an object, half of which Killian had never heard names for before, and then four people placed bids on how much the object cost. Incredible. In the span of an hour, he could learn what iPods did, who made them, and how much money they were. He could do without all the garish interior color schemes and flashing lights, not to mention the obnoxious "Come on down!" every time someone new needed to run down to the bidding row, but the sleek black cars and motorcycles made up for it.

His new phone buzzes in the pocket of his coat, strewn over the chest of drawers. Rolling onto his side, he stretches out for it and sees Emma's name on the little screen. Ingenious device. He's about to bring it to his ear and listen to her, when he finds words on the screen instead.

_Regina still doing the silent treatment. Have to help with the baby. Later. E._

If she thinks the four, now five of them can settle back into that crammed apartment without losing their minds, she has even more tolerance than even he'd credited her with. He sees the button to push to be able to reply to her message, but the blank screen that appears with some little line flashing on and off threatens his confidence. He cancels the whole thing and follows Henry's directions from earlier, holding his breath until he hears the ringing sound that heralds he has learned how to make a phone call on this thing.

"This is Emma. Leave a message."

Voicemail! He remembered that term well enough.

"You know, love, if you'd much rather hear your own screaming than that of your brother's, I can arrange that." With a grin, he places his phone back on top of his coat and shifts his head on the pillow, closing his eyes.

* * *

><p>He awakens to pitch blackness, not even the red little digits on the clock breaking the darkness. Sitting up, he runs his fingers through his hair and lets out a chuckle that however Swan does it, he can't recreate it. Her fingertips grazing his scalp, sifting through his hair, might just be the most rejuvenating thing in creation. That thought prompts him to swing his legs over and reach blindly in the dark for his phone to see if she left a message, knowing full well she didn't or else he'd have heard it.<p>

_One new message._

Ah. So the buzzing indicates a message, not a call. He'll have to listen for it from now on. He notes the time before he selects the message, only nine o'clock and no blurred street lights from behind the curtains.

_New power outage is enough to make me scream for now, thanks. _

It rings the second his face breaks out into a grin.

"Hello, love."

"Hey, well, as you can tell, nobody's got any electricity," she groans.

"I'm sure it reminds them all of their homeland that way." A quiet laugh responds.

"Dad and I are going to check out the power lines. Uh, the things that run along the road...that's a terrible way to describe that. Where are you?"

"Upstairs at Granny's," he says, his eyebrow rising. Standing up, he pulls back the curtains and pokes his fingers through the blinds to peer out the window. A full moon illuminates the night rather than the street lights and shop windows, fortuitous for starlight, but not much else. Squinting, he looks beyond the buildings toward the horizon. He can make out something shimmery, and stark white compared to the rest of the night. It reminds him of mountain peaks in the distance.

"I was just there," she huffs. "Still there?"

"What's the white substance due east of here?" he asks. He doesn't even recall hills, much less anything else. Scrambling for his boots and coat, he throws them on and almost leaps out the door. Taking the stairs two at a time, he weaves around the tables to the back of the diner and outside.

"What do you mean—what the hell?" he hears her breathe into the phone. "You're seeing this, too?"

"Hold on." He crosses the vacant black streets with only the scent of saltwater to guide him toward the harbor. It isn't long before he can hear the water smacking the hulls of the boats, the wind whistling down the sails. Their flapping could as easily be gulls or ghosts in this darkness, the only thing louder the creaking vessels rocking on the waves. He picks up a lantern hanging on the boathouse and holds it out in front of him. Sometimes old-fashioned is the way to go, he thinks, smirking at the undefeated candle inside it.

Out a half mile or so from shore stands an endless wall of ice, jagged towers of blue and white jut out from the crystalline surface.

"It appears to be a wall," he offers up. So helpful...

"Yeah, I'm looking at it now," she says. "I'm going to follow it down to the town line."

"You think that's where it started?"

"No, but that always seems to be the starting point for all this shit. Why don't you follow it on your end and meet us up there?"

"Sure thing," he says before ending the call. So much for Netflix, whatever that is, he thinks, stepping over a few discarded planks of woods, their nails catching the lantern light. He knows it's not flicking nets, that that's just what it sounds like, but he'd have been more game for that than this second act of some showoff's ice abilities.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Coming up? The sad sound of a hook chipping away at a block of ice.**


	3. Debilitated Help

**A/N: Here is the week's update a bit early in light of Christmas. After this, it will be back to weekly updates. Enjoy!**

* * *

><p>"In case you were wondering," he says, catching his breath and snapping his eyes shut at the blinding light sticks shining at him. "It goes the whole way round."<p>

Swan's focus...and light stick...returns to the wall, but David's shoulders tense. He takes his sweet time lowering the light, too.

"Hook," he sighs. "I didn't know you were joining us."

He edges closer to them, the shadow of a grin burgeoning at the chance to rile up both of them.

"I get a distress call from a fair maiden and I'm on the spot." Ah, Swan rolling her eyes at him once again. David places his hands on his hips and shifts his weight, more determined to look at the ice wall than ever.

"I was not distressed, and you're saying this wall goes around, what, the whole town?" she asks, but more with the tone of hoping he'll some something to contradict that assumption. She knows all too well the wall doesn't end. David shifts again, leaving only one hand on his hip, his other arm flexing and twitching every which way.

"Aye, that it does."

"So once again we can't leave Storybrooke," he concludes, on the edge of both snapping and sighing.

"Doing more than keeping us inside by the looks of that," Killian notes, a fallen pole with wires and metallic barrels all around it. It looks familiar...because they line up along the perimeters of the streets, joined together by the lines, he remembers, swelling with pride at solving it. Power lines. He knows it's a small triumph, but he'll take it. "I guess that's what caused the loss of power?"

She blinks and flinches, her torso turning toward him with a subdued look of pride on her face. "Look at you becoming a twenty-first century man. Yeah, it looks to me like whoever was putting up the wall wasn't trying to take out the lights. They were just putting up the wall."

Stands to reason, he thinks with a slight nod of his head. He may not know much about magic, but he knows well enough someone like Regina or Rumpelstiltskin could snuff out every light with a wave of a hand, a towering wall completely unnecessary.

"To keep us all in. Why?" David wonders out loud.

Because the only reason you keep someone in is to keep them from getting out, he thinks.

"Kill us all one by one," he answers, well aware he's chosen the most theatrical phrasing possible. David recoils. "It's what I'd do."

He moans out a sound of disgust, the chatter coming from something in the car they came in the perfect excuse to step away from the pirate for a few moments. Smirking, he glances over at Swan, still trying to form her own conclusions in regards to the whole thing. Well, if he can unnerve one member of the family so easily, he knows exactly how to unnerve the other.

"Oh! I should have brought the champagne!" He gestures into the air and sways a bit, mirroring the intrigued smile she doesn't even know she's giving him.

"What?"

"To celebrate our second date, and because we've got the world's biggest ice bucket." Had she not perpetuated using Regina as an excuse, they could have explored this Netflix thing, maybe have been dining and conducting other activities before this newest crisis. He's all for a well-lit room to allow him to see every facet of her, every twinge of change in her face, but even he will acknowledge there are situations in which pitch darkness can be romantic rather than sinister.

She might as well be able to hear his thoughts with the speed in which her face falls. She knows where he's going with this.

"Second date? Did I miss the first?"

"Aye, the snow monster's the first; ice wall's the second. After all, if I only counted quiet dinners, we wouldn't even get one." He wants to go on, reiterate again how pointless it is to put off and put off some more until everything's back to normal. Gods, this is Storybrooke. This _is _normal. For a moment, she flusters, her mouth setting in a way that he knows she agrees but...

"I think I see something behind the wall." Still flustered, her eyes dart as best they can to him while still never leaving the wall. "You wait here with the ice bucket while I check that out."

Well, never a dull moment. He can say that much.

David returns, the corner of Killian's eye catching something like reluctance in him.

"I think it's time you and I have a little talk about your intentions with my daughter," he says. Oh, this should be rich.

"That's a little old-fashioned, even by my standards, and I still pay with doubloons."

"Oh, I remember your reputation." David heaves a sigh and follows Emma's silhouette along the ice with his light stick, meant to be avoiding eye contact, of course, he thinks, but if he's supposed to feel any discomfort from it, it's a spectacular failure since all he's achieving is making it more awkward...and rather insulting. He knows far easier ways to find, well, far easier companionship. "Emma is not some conquest."

"I wouldn't risk my life for someone I see as loot," he says, sure to add some bite to his tone. Cocking his head, he hopes to make eye contact, but David refuses to even turn his head. "Whatever we become, it's up to her as much as me."

At last he glances over at him with an embarrassed expression, one that sets a poultice over the insults. It hadn't been doubt; rather simply seeking reassurance. She is his daughter, after all, and the noble prince is still getting used to having one. He lifts his eyebrows to make certain they're all right, that they don't need to have this discussion again, and mercifully David understands and nods. Well, back to business. Ice business...Storybrooke's magical natural state...

He trudges up closer to the wall, Emma's outline disappearing behind the jagged points. At least if there is a clue to be found regarding who or what caused this, it should be easy to spot provided it isn't glacier blue.

"Emma?"

She's standing atop a small narrow ridge with a woman in a pale diaphanous gown that blends in with the ice, hair so blonde it's closer to white. There's no doubt in his mind she's responsible for the wall...her clear white appearance seems to imply she was made to create ice walls...stop, stop walking. He almost staggers to a stop as both Emma and the ice woman have their arms locked out at them in a warning.

"Stay back," Emma calls to them, fairly calm, so he focuses on the other woman. Her chest heaves, her breathing loud enough and rapid enough to tell she's fighting off panic, her face whiter than it had been just seconds ago if that's even possible. David holds his gun at the ready, only for snowflakes to fall out of nowhere around them. A howling wind prevents either of them from deciphering what Emma's trying to shout to them. Not even a second goes by before the ridge begins to rumble, more turrets of stony ice penetrating up from the ground, mounds of snow from the top of the wall toppling down, down, ever closer to them. He dodges to the ground and covers the back of his head, wet chunks of snow slicing at the back of his neck and melting once they hit his skin. Their melted remains trickle down his back.

In a rush, the biting air stings his eyes, the snow gives way for his fingertips and palm maneuvering around, and the snowflakes in front of his face freeze midair before vanishing as quickly as they came. Lifting up his head, he sees the ridge is gone. There is only more wall.

He leaps up as best he can on the ice and just stands there, swallowing. She's not there. One minute right in front of him and the next gone, behind all this. She's not there.

"The device. Call her," he orders David as soon as he too realizes Emma's nowhere. Gone. Behind the ice. In the wall.

"Emma? Are you in there?" David cries into the metal block. Nothing but a crackle.

"I'm getting her out."

There's enough of a path left to climb onto the spot where she was, and for an absurd second, he believes he should be able to see her if he just stays right there on it. No. No, she's behind the ice. In the wall. His hook digs into the ice, flecks of it chipped away, but no more. It's as thick as it looks and she's behind it.

"What if we lift?" David tries, already stooping down to search for a weakness, a gap in the ice boulders. He braces against it to give him leverage, but to no avail. He goes back to chipping away at it. Fleck by fleck, he has to! Has to get in there, get her away from that woman before she freezes her...

Damn it, David, breaking his concentration and his task, grabbing his arm, keeping his hook away from the ice.

"Don't! I'm not giving up!"

"We won't, but this is not getting us anywhere!" he shouts back, his voice already hoarse.

"Well I'm open to suggestions!" He'll give him a few seconds. Please, David. Some idea.

"Magic made this thing," David thinks out loud. "I think we're going to need magic to unmake it, and I'm not going to stop fighting until we do." His features light up, maybe an idea coming. Hopefully an idea coming. He brings the brick up to his mouth again. "Emma, do you hear me? Emma, are you okay? Say something!"

Nothing answers his pleading barks, just a few nonsensical sounds.

"Dad? Can you hear me?"

Longest two seconds of his life...he snatches the brick and speaks into it.

"Emma. Say again."

"I'm...in here with this woman. She's looking for her sister, Anna." She's cold. She's freezing cold because she's behind the bloody ice. Listening to her shaky words, like she's speaking quicker than she can think, it's too easy to picture each shiver that interrupts her train of thought. "She thinks Anna is in town because..." she hisses at the ice around her. "...she found a necklace of hers in Gold's shop. She wants us to try to find her before..."

"Before I freeze this town and everyone in it," the stronger voice of the other woman finishes for her.

* * *

><p>Ordinarily, he would avoid this place. Ordinarily he would be more inclined to seek out Regina, whether she was making herself scarce or not. But with Emma's life on the line, the only image that comes to mind upon considering Regina is that look of pure unadulterated hatred she shot at her last night in front of the diner.<p>

So here they are in front of the pawn shop, and he has to close his eyes and grit his teeth and hope, _hope_, Rumpelstiltskin is in a generous mood.

He tells himself it will be all right as he closes the car door and bursts into the main room with David, the bell heralding their arrival. "Ambivalent" is the first word he can think of when he tries to gauge just how the Dark One and the Savior get on, which leaves room for the hope he will be inclined to help her.

It also leaves room for the thought that he would let her die without so much as an eye blink, but he pushes that notion out of his head.

"It appears our honeymoon is over," Rumpelstiltskin sighs to Belle. The two of them stand behind the counter, binders and books and cards splayed out everywhere, an inventory of some kind.

"Yeah, there's an emergency. Emma's trapped under ice by a woman with some kind of ice magic," David says.

"And this involves me because...?"

Bloody selfish coward... "Ambivalence," his ass...

"You're the bloody Dark One! Do something!" he blurts out. All the power in the world wasted...

"Well I could melt the ice and destroy it with a thought, but that would also destroy your girlfriend. Is that what you want?" Rumpelstiltskin counters, and he clenches his fist. His arm draws back just an inch.

David throws out an arm between the two of them. Killian's seen it before under many different circumstances, how one person's panic inspires another's calm, and a fortunate thing, too, since he is this close to coming apart at the seams. They shouldn't waste their time with someone of his caliber. They should nab some locator spell or the like wedged in some corner of this shop and just go recruit Regina into this, promising her anything in return for a shot of practical, non-lethal magic.

"Now the woman who has Emma trapped is in there with her, and she's looking for her sister. Name of Anna," he hears David explaining as he attempts to control his breathing. "She thinks she's in town because of something of hers she found in your shop, a necklace."

"Is that it?" Belle thrusts one of the cards out at them so quickly he blinks. So that explains taking inventory on one's honeymoon; naturally the ice woman would take the necklace after seeing it. He stares at the small square picture of it, a snowflake. Of course. He skims over the descriptor in small blocked letters next to it, but no clues leap out at him.

"Wait," David murmurs, staring at it even harder than he is. He releases his grasp and lets David take it, his brow furrowed in thought. "I know this. I know exactly who Anna is."

"Anna?" Belle repeats, squinting at the name.

"No time to explain. Thank you." There's no time to even glance back at them, for he has to follow David out. He's broken into a run even though the car is right in front of the shop.

"Get in! I know where to go!"

Killian won't ask questions until they're well on their way, the sooner the better as there seems to be a silent agreement between the two of them not to use the talking brick until they are able to provide the ice woman some answers, although the temptation to ask her to put Emma on, to just check on her for a second, grows by the minute.

"What are we doing?" he mutters at the glass in front of him.

"Anna's an old friend. Long story," David adds, gesturing with his hand. "And in the short time I knew her, she was branded by someone."

"Branded? You know we can't return this woman worse for wear."

"No, no...it's this magic thing."

"You know it's easy to see where Emma gets her communication skills..."

"Just...follow my lead."

He stops several streets over at a dank shop, its dirty glass windows apparent even in the dark. Leaning forward in his seat, he sets his jaw at the torn papers peeling off the front door.

"She's a butcher here, but she was, she was someone who lorded her power over everyone where I come from, and one of the ways she did that was by being able to keep tabs on everyone she branded, or marked with her magic."

"And she branded Anna a long time ago," he concludes. Taking into account the hushed way David speaks about her, he glances down at his sword. "I take it this woman's not the type who appreciates negotiation."

David shakes his head. "I'll try it. Cursed identities can do a number on people, but..." he trails off, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "How do you feel about taking the back entrance?"

At this point he's prepared to slit her throat, but he'll keep that to himself. Opening his door and stepping out as quietly as he can, he spends an eternity closing it with the same delicacy. The street lights and windows still black, he raises an eyebrow.

"If the power's out, mate, wouldn't it be more likely she's at her house?"

David half-whistles, half-exhales before words form. "She took particular joy out of what she did then. Trust me, chopping up flesh in the dark sounds like her thing."

Slitting her throat sounds better and better all the time. Yet he scurries around to the back of the building, past an overloaded dumpster that even in the middle of the night has a host of flies buzzing around it. He steps around a puddle too dark for him to tell if it's water or blood, the spillage from a butcher's shop slightly different from the guts and fluids on the deck of a ship. He tries the handle on the door and, clucks his tongue at the fact it's unlocked. Confident war lord-turned-butcher or whatever she was.

He steps through a short dark corridor that comes out right where David and the woman are talking, surrounded by cleavers.

"You don't have your helpers here with you anymore, Peep."

"Right. I just have one," her sharp unpleasant voice gloats as she picks up one of the cleavers. "Say hello."

He rushes out and takes hold of her wrist with his hook, shifting to the side to avoid the blade hitting him in the head. David leaps over the counter and backs her into one of her lockers.

"Now, my daughter's in trouble and I need to find the person that can help her, someone you branded."

"I branded a lot of people," she says with an almost erotic satisfaction in her smugness. Not two minutes have gone by and already he believes without a shadow of a doubt David's assertions regarding how terrible she was.

"Her name was Anna. She went by Joan back then."

"Do I look like I keep a record book?" she snaps at him. "'Cause I don't."

"Then you know what I need. Hook, back room!" he calls to him. It's what they should have done in the first place, just broken in and taken it. He only half-listens to the instructions being shouted at him. Something tells him he'll know a conspicuous out-of-place item when he sees it. His eyes lock in on a shepherd's crook propped up on the wall of the desk.

"You're looking for a shepherd's crook!"

Was able to glean that for myself, mate, he thinks, unable to resist catching a glimpse of the woman's rage at it in his hand.

"Hey! Hey! That's my personal property! Give it up!"

"Sorry," he hears David say. The two of them are engaged in some sort of heated argument, probably something having to do with the old days, but the brick sends out a deep piercing sound like rushing wind.

"Hello? Hello? This is Elsa. You need to bring Anna here now. Please. Emma's losing consciousness. I'm, I'm afraid she'll freeze to death. Please. Please, I can't control it."

He should answer. He should do something, anything, besides stand frozen himself.


	4. Relief

He hauls her into the back of the car, barely hearing David and Elsa behind them. Not one thing about her he could describe as being warm, the tips of her hair and the shallow breaths she releases into his neck eliciting nothing but shivers. She presses into his torso once they're both in, scrambling into his lap and ramming her hands into his pockets.

"Sit tight back there. I'm getting Dr. Whale on speaker," David announces to them without looking back, all his attention on starting the car. Blasts of warm air shoot out at them at the same time he feels the now-familiar vibrations under his feet. The wheels squeal, a side of the car practically lifting off the road. An invisible force thrusts both of them into the back cushioning of the seats as he hears a phone ringing, magnified in volume, but he can scarcely concentrate on it, not when he feels the weight of Emma's head lolling onto his shoulder.

"No, no, no, stay awake, at least until we speak to the doctor," he murmurs to her, flexing his shoulders to prop her up just a little. She groans in response and scrunches her nose.

"But you're so warm and you smell good," she slurs, a violent shiver following. He wraps his arms around her tighter. She's alive, so he allows himself another breath. Her hair brushing against his cheek, a wave of exhaustion washes over him like he's been held underwater all night.

"...don't let her fall asleep, not until her body temperature's back to normal," he can hear Whale's faint voice over the rush of heat blowing out all around them. "When you get her home, cover her up, upper body first. Hands and feet can wait. Warm liquids, make sure she stays dry for a while. One she starts warming up, you can draw her a bath, but do not, I repeat, do not immerse her in water right away."

"Thank you," David yells into the phone. He swerves the car onto the next street, sending them all reeling, but the jostling seems to jolt Emma back into some semblance of lucidity. She can turn her head anyway.

"Emma, Emma, I'm getting Henry on the phone next, let him know we're coming, okay?" David shouts back to her. She nods, but the motion seems to course down her spine, another shiver overtaking her. He can't push into her any more. His fingers and wrist have locked up, the corner of his mouth digging into the pulse point on her neck, his leg trying to curl around hers, no small feat when she's already straddling him. Every muscle, every droplet of blood in him changes course in hopes of warming her.

"You found me," she whispers to him, her voice already much steadier than it had been before.

* * *

><p>Henry knows they're coming. He'd answered David's questions and promised to get things ready, his voice curt and shaky from masking fright. Killian's kept Emma awake with the most annoying tactics possible, flicking the dimple on her chin, grinding the side of his boot against her calf, bobbing his shoulder up and down when her head starts to feel limp on it. Elsa has yet to face the front of the car, her arm reaching out so she can pat Emma's knee.<p>

The sudden stop of the car jerks all of them forward and Killian almost expects a rush of cold air upon opening the door, but there's a world of difference between the temperature outside the apartment and back at the wall.

"Let's get her inside. Henry should be rounding up the quilts. Mary Margaret's got at least three of them in the living room alone," David rambles, bustling to the door to hold it open for them. His eyes keep darting back at them, but he doesn't say anything.

"Come on, Swan," he urges her, trying to scoot out the door with her still in his lap. He gathers her back up, her legs no warmer than they were when he'd picked her up back at the ice wall.

"I-i-it's on the th-third floor," she protests, but even with her teeth chattering it feels halfhearted.

"I've ca-"

"I-I know. You've ca-carried rum barrels h-heavier than me," she says, laying her head back down and burrowing her forehead into his chest. He won't even ask how she knew he was going to say _that _of all things—time a little too of the essence, especially since she's half-asleep again.

Elsa needs no invitation, running up ahead of all of them and opening the door. Henry raises his eyebrow at her and his mouth drops open in confusion, but he doesn't say anything. She hustles into the room with her hands on her hips and sways in a circle, searching. David squeezes in past them to try the lights and then pulls a blanket up from the foot of the bed.

He should be doing something, and yet, he can't do much more than place her in a chair far from the windows and kneel next to her, her hand stinging his, it's so cold.

"Emma? You okay?" David returns and and piles the blanket on top of the one Elsa's already wrapped around her. A furtive nod and incoherent "hmms" answer him.

"She's so cold," he says to nowhere in particular, and then he feels his fingers being parted. Looking down, he watches her interlock her fingers in his, clenching his knuckles with her fingertips. If she wasn't still panning the room with her eyes, fighting to stay focused, he'd pin the sudden return of the lights on her magic. She needs more heat than this drafty place can scrounge up. Even when its inhabitants are at their warmest and most inviting, the apartment retains a persistent coolness that made things like wearing layers and the little space heater in the bathroom appear cozy...

Ah. That should do the trick. He leaves her for a split second to retrieve it. Setting it down at her feet, his hand catches a streak of warm air blowing out of it.

"Oh, that's good," she says, smiling up at him, her voice not overwhelmed with cold. Also good that it was already working, he thinks, peeking down at the knob at the top of it with numbers written to the side. Settings, he wants to say those are called. Bending back down, he reaches over for it and turns the knob to the highest number.

"I'll go make some hot cocoa," Henry offers after staring at his mother for a minute.

"Wait." Swan's voice gains some strength. Her arm wiggles out of the blankets to press on his sleeve.

"I know," Henry says with a smile. "With cinnamon."

She has to jerk her body into Henry's to embrace him, apologizing, of all things, something about help or the lack thereof earlier in the day. His arm hovers over her, the small movement rendering her out of breath. She continues to hug the lad, however, panting as she does so.

"I'm just glad you're okay. I was already down to one mother and I won't go lower than that."

He takes her jittery laughter as a good sign in spite of another shiver rippling through her. He brings his arm up around her, certain he'll feel the cold on her back even with two blankets in between.

"Elsa, you okay?" It's easier to examine her face now that it's more animated. It should have been easier to when still, but he compares it to how it looks in the course of a day, all the expressions she's not even aware she makes. She may have turned her head in Elsa's direction, but she looks more like herself. Elsa hesitates, he sees out of the corner of his eye, her eyes doing a quick inspection of Emma before she feels she can give an honest answer.

"Not only have I lost my sister, I've lost her necklace, too. Now I have nothing of hers."

He understands, truly he does, but he finds it a strain to care at the moment. Surely tomorrow he'll be more ready to tackle this latest quest, after Swan can shed the blankets. After she doesn't sound so groggy.

"Then let's find her," David says, crossing over to the crook. He holds it out for her to take, and Swan sits up a little higher, her interest piqued. She instantly winces, though, and twists around until she's all but using him as a crutch. He matches her angles, turning so he can see how it works. Elsa and David have it positioned so they are looking in the space between the staff and where it curves downward.

"I don't see anything," she says.

"It should work," David sighs.

"Is it broken?" he suggests. It's not as though the butcher woman kept her workspace shipshape.

"Or does it mean something happened to her?" Elsa's eyes widen, image upon image of grisly ends probably circulating in her mind. If she panics, she could ice over the apartment, he thinks, gritting his teeth, his legs stiffening.

"Wait, what's that sound?" Swan asks suddenly. All motionless, they watch the air, blocking out the gentle hum of the heater until a faint thumping sound thuds clearer and clearer.

"Is that a heartbeat?" Elsa's eyes well with tears and hope. Now he can care with a little more ease. It's what she does, his Swan, he thinks gazing down at her huddled mass, feeling her fingers rub against his wrist. She finds people, finds reasons for them to hope.

"We might not know where your sister is, but we know the most important thing," Swan whispers, her voice back to gravely, but only because she's drained, her hands and arms and shoulders giving off more and more of a sweet warmth.

"She's alive," Elsa chokes out.

* * *

><p>Snow's motherly instincts kick in immediately after David retells the night's events, every detail widening her eyes more. There's a split second of horror on her face before she lays the baby into his cradle and marches over to Emma, yanking her up off the chair and placing the back of her hand against her daughter's forehead. She holds her hands, wincing at the cold, and ushers her into the bathroom, calling for Henry to scrounge up a change of clothes for her.<p>

The sudden sound of rushing water from behind the door prompts his eyes to veer anywhere but there. He should be hearing it any minute now that David has realized the danger has passed, a courteous but deliberate affirmation that they can take it from here, a quick thanks for his help, and a not-too-subtle suggestion he go back to his room.

Pretending he's slowly making his way to the front door, he spies David rummaging through a closet, pulling out extra pillows and a lumpy mass that looks simultaneously heavy and light.

"Henry, you want to go upstairs and set this thing up? Elsa, we don't have a lot of extra space, but you're welcome to stay with us until we find Anna. Henry's getting it all set up for you."

"That's, that's very generous of you," she says, summoning back some of her composure. It's rather easy to imagine her as a ruler. "How exactly is he doing that?"

"Come on up! I'll show you!" Henry calls down to her, and Killian invites himself along, eager for a reason to cleave himself of the bathroom door and to see just what the thing David handed off to Henry is. Stepping away from the warmth of the space heater, he takes slow long strides up the stairs. The last time he'd been in the upstairs of the apartment, he'd broken in, in search of his hook. That night he'd rifled through everything in the dark. That night he'd shaken off thoughts of Emma entering into his head as a distraction.

It had changed since he'd been there. An actual bed took the place of the fold-out couch that had been there before...although the deep red sheets remained. The bureau looked the same, but the ajar closet door revealed a few more clothes and jackets than before, a few more boxes on the top shelf.

He jumps at a grating sound coming from the corner where a cot had been shoved aside. The blue deflated rock of a thing was inflating, growing more and more into the shape of a mattress. He looks over at Henry, but the lad seems keen on waiting until the noise has subsided before explaining anything to Elsa, whose eyes are as bulged as his must be at the blaring transformation before them.

"So, we'll get you a pillow and some blankets and you're all set," he says. To be sure, it's a mattress.

"I've taken your space," Elsa objects with both her hands out, motioning at the cot.

"Nah, it'll just be a little tight up here, and I could take it downstairs if we get into a pinch. Killian, you're on the couch tonight?"

Is he? A quick glance at the clock indicates it's one in the morning. By the time he gets back to Granny's and fights off her, Ruby, and others...as there is always a scant crowd...asking him about what caused the power outage, what he makes of the ominous looking ice wall surrounding the town, gets to his room and showers...because he can't seem to return to that room and _not _shower anymore...another hour will have passed, maybe more, and he, they, will have their work cut out for them tomorrow. Anna could be anywhere. Henry's staring at him, waiting for a response. He scratches his ear and shuffles...

"The couch is smaller, kid. That might be a better place for you to crash tonight." Swan's skin gleams a warm pink, a sight for sore eyes after her sunken eyes and blue lips from before. Her hair still has some damp waves in it from her bath, flowing down her back as she's clad in the softest looking white shirt he's ever seen.

Henry nods at her and makes a stop for her on his way down the stairs where he leans into her and allows her to kiss his forehead and cradle his head one last time for the night. She looks remarkably the way her father does when he holds her. Watching him go downstairs, she folds her arms and looks over at him and Elsa.

"I'm, uh, I don't plan on doing anything else for the night." Her eyes settle on Elsa. "First thing in the morning, we'll go back out to the wall and then start tracking down Anna."

"You have a lead?" Elsa asks.

"Gold's shop," she sighs. "Besides, if your sister's necklace was there, it's a safe bet he's got some kind of magic homing pigeon or custom-made Anna finder that can do the job." With a more serious tone, she adds, "We have a lot of things working in our favor, Elsa. Anna wants to be found. She's alive, and one of her possessions wound up here. For all we know, Anna's been here ever since the original curse."

"Curse?"

"Not cursed anymore. No, Storybrooke's just a regular place that has magical stuff going on in it."

He lets out a silent laugh. Savior, sheriff—with such a horrible way with words. Laughing at herself, she lets her arms plop down to her sides and says she'll explain later. Elsa places her hands on her hips, but the motion seems more a habit than a sign of exasperation. She gives her a wry smile and tosses her braid to one side before sliding down onto the mattress, seeming to fall asleep the moment her head hits the pillow. He supposes at least a day's worth of wandering around in uncharted territory and conjuring monsters and ice walls takes its toll.

Flexing his shoulder blades toward each other, he stifles a yawn and looks over his shoulders at the stairs.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Swan's already crawled into bed, only the very top of her head visible under the covers, but the shape underneath the blanket reveals she's curled up in a ball.

"I wasn't sure on the arrangements..."

"Just come on," she says, her arm like a mole beneath the earth tunneling its way to the other side of the bed. "Don't get too excited, though. I'm about to be out like a light."

"Just on top of the covers then," he says after a moment's hesitation and a soft shuffle. Like the night in her New York apartment all over again, he removes only his boots and his coat and treats the sleeping surface far more gingerly than required. Reclining, he stiffens just a little at his back hitting the headboard and instantly relaxes once he feels her huddle into him.

"You're still cold?"

"No."

* * *

><p>He wakes up to a sound he swears is a mewling kitten, and for a moment has no idea where he is, so sure he wouldn't be able to fall asleep. Opening one eye, he cranes his head just a tad so as not to wake Emma and listens for the sound again. He knows he's bleary-eyed, the whole room, even the hands on her clock blurred. He hears it again, stronger, angrier.<p>

He must still be in need of rest as it takes longer than it should for it to register it's the baby. He lays his head back down and soon hears footsteps and incoherent but gentle whispers downstairs. A creak of the cradle, a few thuds against a countertop, the quick whoosh of the sink—he knows Snow is trying to be as quiet as she can in their cramped apartment.

He wants to laugh, not sure why given the hellish situation before, so he twists around only to find Swan had taken his hand sometime in the night and tucked it between her cheek and her shoulder.

"Are you awake?" he murmurs. A bit of moonlight shines down revealing her eyes darting around behind closed lids, the ghost of a smile on her face. Dreaming, and contently, he notes. It would be just the right moment to stroke her hair if he had another hand for it, and he won't risk tangling the hook in it while she's sleeping. It would have been the perfect way to distract him from remembering every awful detail that was almost losing her. It was only timing and David's motivation that saved her; he'd been utterly useless. All the knowledge he'd soaked up about this world in such a short span of time and it ultimately accomplished nothing.

He takes it back. Timing, David, and _magic _had dictated the night's events and Emma's fate. Magic had built the ice wall. Magic had refused to allow Elsa to control it. Magic led all of them to discover this Anna was alive somewhere. And neither Regina nor Rumpelstiltskin had allowed their own magic to be an option.

His sigh turns into a grunt at the Dark One. Blasted shopkeeper crocodile had refused them when it would have cost him nothing to do anything at all. His dignity, and only his dignity, relishes that he wasn't part of the original curse, that he hadn't been another poor denizen forced to pay the formidable Mr. Gold rent and consider a day he wasn't evicted from his own premises a good day. He had thought the curse's purpose had been to deprive people of their happiness, but Rumpelstiltskin had done quite all right for himself—comfort and power, the things the coward craved, and love on top of it. And now, in addition to all that, he also had magic. Even Bae's death didn't seem to put a wrinkle into anything.

Now you're just being cruel, he tells himself, closing his eyes. He nestles into Emma more, to where his nose is in her hair. Of course he misses Bae. How could he not? Of course his death affected him. The Dark One's not the problem, a small voice in him states. It's you. You don't belong here. You have no place in this marriage of two worlds. Emma survived a snow monster and freezing to death today and it's just as likely she could fall victim to something tomorrow.

Emma can take care of herself, he argues...with himself...gods, he's tired. He banishes the thoughts from his head as this is no time for this sort of thing. What matters is the present—be a good man and be there for Emma.

Yes, but how, the small voice nags again. He won't answer it tonight. Instead, he musters a smile at how numb his hand has gone with her sleeping on it. Ought to tell her, he tells himself, but even trying the words on for size sends a shiver down his spine, no matter how true they are. He'll find a way. He'll find a way to be part of this world, to offer her something besides his presence to help her carry her Savior burden. He has to.

"I love you," he whispers into the back of her neck.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Coming up? Fun with daggers.**


	5. When All the Trails Run Cold

Rays of light slip in between the window panes, casting shapes of pure light over the bed and across the floor. They'd started out a fiery pink and just now take on that whiteness that people usually associate with morning. He'd watched the transformation, the remains of the night spent fretting over fears he'd been too tired to properly label and listening to the baby mark the hours in a random pattern.

Part of him must have still been asleep, though, for a rush of air hits his hand, reminding him how numb it had been overnight. Swan springs up out of bed in such a hurried fashion that he would have read it as scandalized if not for the serene look on her face. He watches her trace the perimeter of the bed on her way to her closet, pulling out a shirt and a jacket.

"Where are we off to, love?" he asks, his voice as groggy as hers had been last night.

"Town line. Melt the ice wall," she says in the midst of her brisk walk back past the bed the other way toward the tiny powder room off to the side.

"Right."

"Actually, I think it would be better for Elsa if there were fewer people around. She might still be a little gun-shy without her sister around," she says from behind the closed door. Sitting up, he rubs his eye and sees Elsa still asleep on the mattress on the floor, her head off her pillow and kinked down the edge of the mattress.

"We'll swing by and pick you up when it's time to go interrogate Gold about Anna. Guy has a whole vault that includes people in urns? Seems really unlikely Elsa went into that willingly." She emerges from the powder room fully dressed, frowning over at the corner of the loft. "Elsa, Elsa, come on. It's time to go."

"That can't be comfortable," he notes, tilting his head at the ice queen's position.

"Elsa," she tries again. Elsa stirs, so he stretches and fumbles his legs around the floor for his boots. Anna may be alive, but if the crocodile has anything to do with it, she's probably stuck in a painting in his shop or trapped in the crawlspaces as a mouse.

"Sorry," Elsa says, cracking her neck. "I was dreaming I was trapped again. You would have thought I'd have woken up." She cranes around at her surroundings for a moment before standing, graceful even at...six in the morning... It prompts him to muse her snaring the Dark One in a block of ice should he gets testy with them.

"We'll make a quick stop at the wall and then we will be tracking down Anna," Swan assures her, straightening the lapels on her jacket and stepping over to where he's just started to stand for his coat. She runs her fingers through his hair in her rough way, bringing him to full alertness as it always does. "We shouldn't be long."

* * *

><p>"Who else can do what you can do?" he asks from the back seat of the car. He refuses to call it the "bug" until he finds out if that is truly what little yellow vessels here are called or if it's some term of endearment Swan gave it. She and Elsa had returned from the wall confused, angry, and suspicious—fantastic combination, although it was more than justified. Elsa's powers had failed to melt the wall. They'd tried together, and nothing. He had waited patiently for them to elaborate, wondering if it was, as Swan called it, her being gun-shy without her loved one around to give her some confidence. They'd concluded that the only explanation was that someone else had added enchantments to it. Marvelous. Now someone else in the town felt like causing trouble. He'd much prefer they all come out of their shops and cars and voice their intentions all together in one collective villain song...less beating around the bush that way.<p>

"No one. As far as I know, my powers are unique," Elsa says from the passenger seat, clutching the sides of it for dear life and cringing every time Emma so much as applied the brake. Ah, go easy on her, he tells himself. A year ago, that was you.

"We'll worry about that later. One thing at a time," she chides them, turning onto the main street, the pawn shop's sign in clear view.

"Not too much later, Swan. Whoever's responsible for keeping up the wall sees it as an opportunity. Quite likely they've been planning, or wanting to plan the same sort of thing for a long time and just needed a way to do it." He makes eye contact with Elsa, averting her eyes from the front glass. "They may see you as their ticket to start any number of things."

"Then they may be involving Anna in all this," Elsa groans to herself. "If only I could remember."

The three of them say nothing as the car stops in front of the shop. Swan doesn't wait for either of them, marching straight into the shop, the bell banging against the door.

"This was the woman in your urn, Elsa," she says, pointing to Elsa, still behind her.

"Always a befuddled pleasure, Miss Swan." Rumpelstiltskin finishes setting a few vases back on the jam-packed shelves behind him and slithers out from behind the counter. The whole place would seem disorderly if there was anyone else running it.

"When we went back in time, an urn fell through the time portal and she came out of it. From your vault. Now she's here and her sister's missing. You had to have known she was in there, so you have to know who she is and where she came from."

"I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I've never seen her before in my life," he says.

"So how'd she end up inside your urn, inside your secret vault of terror?" Swan scoffs.

"Look, if you really want to know how she wound up there, she's standing right beside you, Miss Swan. Why don't you simply ask her?" He pauses so much between his words, wanting everything out of his mouth to have some gravitas to it, even when he's saying he has no knowledge of something whatsoever. Killian rolls his eyes at the condescending gestures that accompany it, always using his hands to bloody illustrate simple transitions.

"She did, but I can't remember," Elsa says, unfazed. "Something happened to my memories."

"An all-too-common affliction around these parts. Pity." He sneers with a smile, apparently finding his little observation funny. "Urns, necklaces, all manner of things. I can't know the history behind all of them."

"Only if there's something in it for you," he counters. Does he really find them that naive? That stupid? The Dark One immersed himself in magic the way an artist might delve into clays or colors. There would be no way he would acquire something without studying it, dissecting it and taking a sick enjoyment out of doing so. "Right, mate?"

"Yeah, well, that may have been true once, but recently, my life has been turned upside down. I've lost a son, gained a wife." He pauses, looking over at Belle. "So you might say I've decided to turn over a new leaf."

"Don't forget about my superpower. I'll be able to tell if you're lying," Swan warns. She should just go ahead and do it, frankly, he thinks. He's in no mood to hear a testimonial and he's pretty certain Anna would find the whole thing a waste of time, too.

"How about I do you one better? Let's simply have Belle use the dagger on me."

What?

"No, no! Rumple, you don't, you don't have to do that!" Belle takes hold of his arm, so proud and protective, her wedding ring digging into his fingers.

"Miss Swan wants proof, and I'm happy to cooperate," Rumpelstiltskin assures her, holding up a hand. A Rumpelstiltskin entrusting his dagger to someone? Not making life difficult for everyone else just because he can? The words are objective enough, but there is something that burns his ears for hearing them, something that makes all of Belle's resigned sighs and movements retrieving the dagger from her purse...her _purse_, the dagger of the _Dark One_...appear slower.

"I command you, Dark One, to tell them the truth," she says, all too apparently finding the whole thing ridiculous, but not for the same reason he is.

He did die for her, he tells himself.

Yes, but now he's back, now he's back in a world with no son to care about the abuse of power and a woman who inexplicably believes it to be a non-issue. Gods, Zelena had kept him from his own son's burial with that wretched dagger just a few days ago! To think of him handing it off to anyone, even Belle, stretches his imagination a little too far.

"The truth is just as I said. I had no idea there was someone inside there. I know nothing about Elsa—or her sister." There is a flinch that rips Killian's attention from him, Belle lowering the dagger, her face unreadable. "But I wish you the best of luck finding her."

"There. That, that should be good enough, right?" Belle asks Emma, her face bright pink. She keeps looking back at her...he cringes...husband. No. None of this makes sense at all.

"If you really want to cooperate, you won't mind coming out to where the portal was then," Emma says, not placated, which gives him a very validating feeling, he must say.

* * *

><p><em>"You're sure you don't want more tea?"<em>

_ His lips dry at how close the little girl is standing next to him, the tea tray's rim pushing on his chest. It's a sitting room that's seen better days, the cracked corners of the ceilings and the crooked shutters only a couple of signs the place has fallen into disrepair. _

_ "Grace, can you take your things up to your room, please? The Captain will still be here when we're done talking." _

_ They say Jefferson Hatter had teetered on the edge of madness after the debacle that had happened with his wife. The expert portal jumper sported more patches in his clothes than Killian had imagined, more sadness in his eyes than before. He'd given his small lass a loving pat on the back as she gathered up a doll and toy cat and ran down a dusty corridor with them. _

_ "She, she doesn't like me to be out of her sight for long periods of time," he apologizes, his tone sounding as though he wished he could accompany the words with a shrug. Instead, he takes a seat across from him, wide-legged with interlocked fingers. "You know I don't travel through the realms anymore."_

_ "This is the only realm that interests me," he says. Jefferson lifts his palms into the air, still an air of drama about him._

_ "Forgive me for wanting to give a pirate a disclaimer ahead of time. So...there's some other way I can assist you?"_

_ Killian sets the teacup down on the tray, which sits on a wobbly table between them. "I've heard you were an associate of the Dark One, employed, as it were."_

_ "That's true, but I'm sure you can appreciate a certain level of confidentiality as far as my old clientele is concerned," he says with a grin meant to be disarming...and never expects its intended victim to grin right back. Clearing his throat, Jefferson elaborates. "If you made a deal with him in the past, I'm afraid I can't help you."_

_ "There was no deal," he snarls at the word. "And there never will be. What I want to know concerns the Queen's latest prisoner."_

_ "You're out of luck then," Jefferson says, obscuring his face with a prolonged sip of tea. Killian raises an eyebrow at the assumption. "She's completely besotted with the Dark One."_

_ Oh._

_ "Well, rest assured, portal jumper, I'm not seeking out a lover. What I want from her is information, unless I can get it from you first. His dagger. There is a dagger that controls him, and if I can get it, it would assuage a long-kept...grudge. You worked for him, frequented the Dark Castle."_

_ "And you think he'd have been idiot enough to just leave it out where I could see it?" he scoffs, almost snorts._

_ "No, but your reputation as an opportunist precedes you. It's entirely possible you might have snooped or eavesdropped on something," he says, draping his arm over the arm of the chair to play with the tassels of the blanket strewn over it. "However it's far more likely that she knows something, isn't it? She was a maid, wasn't she? That's what I had heard."_

_ "Likelier than you may think," Jefferson grunts after a moment's hesitation. "I'm fairly sure the feeling was mutual, or as mutual as it could be."_

_ It's been so long since Killian's laughed while sober that it unleashes itself as a hoarse cackle. _

_ "It's true!" Jefferson insists. "This Belle has gotten closer to Rumpelstiltskin than anyone. Some are even saying he fell in love with her."_

_ "If he loved her, he would have gone after her."_

_ "Perhaps, but he ended the relationship. The dwarf she ran into...he likes to talk. Presumably, she scared him."_

_ "He ended it...and let her go?" There may have been no snooping at all. In some loose-tongued fit of passion, he could have let slip information about the dagger, but Killian would rather not try to picture the circumstances. _

_ "You're looking at this a bit too naively, Hook." Jefferson leans forward so his arms rest on his knees. "When it came down to it, all it was was a choice between love and power. He chose power. But somehow I don't quite see you grasping the fundamentals of a relationship." _

_ If he hadn't just seen the man's sweet little daughter, there would have been blood. A quick blow to the face first, and then a strong solid beating. His heel bounces off the floor. Setting his jaw, he holds his breath for a short count._

_ "Don't tell me what I do or don't understand," he says, curling his hand into a fist as he stands. "Thank you for your time. I'm sure I can handle an ex-maid." He takes a hearty swig from his flask to burn away the taste of tea. Taking his time, swishing the rum around in his mouth, he remembers in which pocket he'd placed the bag of coins and conjured up his grin. "Grace!" he calls down the corridor._

_ "What are you doing?" Jefferson demands. Too late. The lass bounds back into the sitting room, clutching the same two toys to her chest. There's something in how small she is, this skinny little child so eager to play hostess, that makes him suppress a burgeoning smile. Opening his face up, he entices her over to him with a sweeping bow. Her jaw drops at the presentation of the sack._

_ "Thank you for your hospitality, lass. I don't believe I can repay you for your kindness, but let's consider this a try, shall we?" In a conspiratorial slouch, he hunches down and holds the sack over her hand, waiting until she opens it up to drop it into it. She mumbles an awed thanks and dashes over to her father to show him. _

_ "Good day then," he tells them, letting himself out into the forest, a few miles from the main road. Choosing power over love—damned fool deserved nothing but a swift and solid kick into the next life. The bloody Dark One had dismissed Milah's precious love, Bae's, and now someone else's. One day, one day he would pay for how callous he'd been with other people's hearts._

* * *

><p>They meet Rumpelstiltskin and Belle back at the farmhouse, quiet, unassuming—the clock-like trenches dug in the earth nothing more than moved soil. A strong burned smell still permeates the air, more and more eye-watering the closer they approach the spot that had once been a flaming portal.<p>

"I came out of it right there. Then I...just destroyed it," Elsa says, her hand helping her retrace her steps.

"Well we shall see about that," Rumpelstiltskin says in a knowing way, albeit a little more invested in the situation. He steps around the tracts of dirt. "Belle, may I borrow the dagger, please?"

Killian leans his head back, his tongue running over his teeth behind closed lips. It's almost funny, Belle reaching into her purse and handing him the dagger as if it were a snack or spare coins a couple might hand off to each other on a trip. The Witch, well, gods only knew where she had kept it, but Belle didn't even try to keep its location a secret. Even if she had, if the Dark One took on a specific itch, he could simply take some item from his shop that would lead him right to it. There is no way she would be able to separate him from his power, no matter how much she believed she could.

"Funny thing about magic," he says, walking over to some ash. "It can never be destroyed completely. It simply lives on in other forms."

Taking a knee, he tilts the dagger and sifts the dirt into a bottle, seeming to separate the ash from it, a meticulous...and rather arduous...task, he has to admit...unless one is so practiced in this sort of thing it comes as second nature. Another reason Rumpelstiltskin would never truly part with his dagger—less access to even more power.

"Magic survives," he says heavily, appreciatively.

"As what? Dirt?" Swan asks.

"It's much more than dirt, dearie." Waving his hand while smirking at her, the contents of the bottle develop a greenish yellow, not a shade that far from the wet straw still scattered all around. "That urn could neutralize any magic placed inside it. That's why Elsa remained trapped, and even though the urn appears destroyed, the dust from it contains the very same power, only in a weakened form."

Already standing, he holds out the bottle and his hand as if it were a lecture, so reverent about contained dust. Perhaps he is being too harsh there, he thinks to himself. Cora had known the same thing about magic, gathering the ash from the wardrobe so long ago. But even she wanted it for a purpose; he couldn't in good conscience call Cora someone who wanted for the sake of wanting, someone who just couldn't help themselves when magic was involved.

"The next time you want to destroy something like that," the Dark One continues, stalking towards Elsa like she deserves a scolding. "Be a bit more careful. One sprinkle of this, and all your magic would temporarily vanish." He won't take his eyes off Rumpelstiltskin, but he still manages to see both Swan and Elsa recoil just a bit at the information, although perhaps for different reasons.

"Ready, Belle?"

"Yes, quite," she murmurs, her smile plastered on her face, the smile he's seen on Emma's face countless times when she wanted to conceal the fact she was building her inner walls higher than ever. He watches them go, arm in arm, making sure he returns the dagger to her. He doesn't know if it would be better or worse if she got it back, but she does, and it doesn't comfort him in the least.

It's not real. He'd bet his life on it. There can be no other explanation.

"So that's it," he hears Elsa trying to subdue her disappointment. She tentatively starts to follow Rumpelstiltskin and Belle back to the cars but gravitates to Swan instead. "We have nothing. We don't know how I got in the urn or where Anna is."

"No. We're just starting." Swan should try reassuring others more often. She's not that bad at it. "I promise you we're going to find your sister."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: The scene back at the farmhouse is an actual deleted scene you could look up after the airing of 4x2, so I can't take credit for creating that one. Coming up? Willofthewisp wonders what's wrong with her as getting inside the mind of a three hundred-year-old pirate comes a lot easier to her than writing Elsa does.**


	6. Chaperoning Elsa

For longer than he'd care to admit, the three of them just stand outside the car, arms folded, no one wanting to voice a bad idea. He does know a place full of town records and tilts his head at the possibility of Anna showing up in a census or, better yet, a phone book, but if it were that painless, surely Anna would have understood the significance of an _ice wall_, would have recognized her own sister's magic and found her herself.

He also wonders if now is the time to talk out the encounter with Rumpelstiltskin and his dagger charade, only for Swan's phone to break his concentration.

"Hey, Mayor Mom, what's up..." Her face immediately becomes a series of straight narrow lines, a quick glance over at him indication enough something is wrong. "We'll be right there. Don't let anyone leave."

"What is it?" Elsa asks.

"We need to make a detour at the mayor's office. Sounds like more ice problems."

* * *

><p>It's become too common a scene for his liking—everyone standing around in a state of confusion refusing to be helpless in some magical conundrum. It should bother him more than it does that Marian lies stretched out on the office sofa, her features lined with frost.<p>

"What happened?" Swan asks.

"Perhaps you should ask your new friend," Regina snaps. "After all, it was her monster that attacked Marian."

"Well, to be fair, we _did _provoke the beast," he interjects, glancing over at Elsa. In spite of himself, he likes this ice woman, so devoted to finding her sister that giving up is not an option, and he'll not have arguably the person who has inflicted the most danger upon Storybrooke slinging insults.

"But this isn't my magic. Someone else did this," Elsa argues. Someone else also won't let the wall come down. He raises an eyebrow, knowing the two are connected and yet he can't come up with a single solitary reason why this yet-to-be-seen villain would first ensure no one could escape and then only target a person who had only just arrived in town. Marian didn't seem like the type to have scores of people waiting in line to exact revenge on her for anything.

"Oh, and we're supposed to trust you?" Regina counters in a mock sugary tone.

"You can trust me. If she says it was someone else, it was," Swan snaps back, and the two stare at each other for a moment, much more familiar with the hate just simmering under the surface than...whatever they wanted to call the relationship they'd forged in league against all the other recent threats.

"So how do we break the spell?" Henry asks. Thank you, lad, he breathes, having forgotten he and Snow and David were even in the room. Apparently he's not the only one who can sense how volatile the office's atmosphere has become.

"The only way to cure a freezing spell is an act of True Love," Elsa explains, her expression wincing at some harrowing memory. Odds are, if she knows what to do, the ice woman's past may be a little more sordid than meets-the-eye.

"True Love's Kiss," Regina mutters, her entire stance changing into something more hunched, more resigned. She shoots a hopeless look at Robin.

"Well, then there's no time to lose," he sighs, kneeling down in front of his wife, just looking at her, his fingers tracing her hairline all the way down to her jaw...willing himself to love her again, or at least love her truly. It's not an enviable position, Killian thinks, especially not when there is about to be concrete proof the emotions can't be forced. His lips linger on her, curling back at the cold that must be emitting from hers. "What's wrong? Why isn't it working?"

"I've seen this once before, when Frederick was turned to gold," David says in a hushed voice, sharing a look with Snow.

"Who the hell's Frederick?" Swan asks, her heels coming off the floor, perhaps hoping to be able to track this old acquaintance down.

"Long story," Henry says.

"So the cold is acting as a barrier?" Robin springs up, his face pleading with Regina, then the rest of them, and back to Regina again. "Is there nothing we can do?"

"Well, every curse is different. I need more time to study this one." Regina leans over and holds Marian's hand, sets her palm on the woman's forehead. It's sincere, he notes with wide eyes, nigh motherly; she couldn't have been gentler with her lover's wife than if Henry himself had been positioned on the sofa with a fever.

"I'm going to find who did this before it happens again," Swan vows, already breathless and starting for the door.

"Well, I hope you're bringing backup."

She spins back around before she even starts a debate with herself whether or not to listen. She tosses her hair as she does so, fully aware she's being baited but unable to not take it.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"Well between the monster and the cave-in...seems like the Savior needs saving these days."

He'd love to point out that it's not in anyone's best interest that the Savior has had some bad luck, but it hasn't even been a full twenty-four hours and Swan fortunately spells out the real problem before he can utter a word.

"I think you're bitter and you're taking it out on the wrong person." To the point, but even Regina picks up on the subtle warning in her tone. "I'll be fine."

"Well, I like that battle plan, so I'm with you, Swan," he says. If for no other reason than not wanting to be stuck with Regina and the frozen love triangle they'd been doing a rather fine job of avoiding up until now.

"No. Take Elsa to the sheriff's station. Keep her out of sight. Once people get word of this, they're going to be calling for her head."

Back to avoidance then. Now's not the time to be running hot and cold, love, he considers saying, but with a woman icing over and the even icier stare coming from Swan, he instead bares his face if she decides to read him.

"I'd rather save yours than hers. There's someone dangerous out there..."

"I don't have time to argue with you on this! Can you for once just do what I say?" She proceeds out the door without looking back, without waiting for anyone. Exhaling, he catches Elsa watching him out of the corner of his eye, her rigid stance indication enough she's not thrilled about this, either.

"We're leaving then," she concludes with only a cursory glimpse at Snow and David.

"Right this way," he sighs.

He leads her down as much of the interior of the town hall as they can go, the streets most likely already teeming with hotheaded townspeople ready for a scapegoat...although a scapegoat with ice powers makes a limited amount of sense. Out the back way, they could walk behind the buildings to the station. They _could_, but they won't, he decides. Swan's anxious to prove her competence, fine—even though she has nothing to prove to anyone, but even she will have to admit through all the stubbornness that nothing about this makes any sense. Someone takes advantage of Elsa sealing up the town. Someone ensnares an innocent woman for no reason...because surely if Robin feared for his wife he would have mentioned it or voiced some suspicion...and it all screams desperation to him. Desperation for what, he doesn't know, but it's too showy, anonymity not a goal by any stretch. If the culprit _wants _to be found, on his or her own terms, of course, then it all may be a bid for Swan's attention. And they therefore wouldn't be someone lying low from the Dark One.

Out the back door, he holds out his arm for her to wait before they tiptoe out past the dumpsters and then break into a run into the alleyway. They can cut through that onto the main street and get some answers from the crocodile, real ones.

The darkness around them in the alleyway gives way to daylight all too soon, Killian needing to stop so abruptly Elsa almost catches his heels.

"Wait," he whispers at him with his hand held up, allowing a couple to walk on past. Really, if unaware of the wall and what had just transpired at the mayor's office, the day could pass as mundane, a pale sun lurking behind the clouds and all the beige and gray shades of the town in their full regalia.

"All right, coast is clear." Not hearing Elsa trotting next to him, he half-turns to see her hanging back, sour-faced, but in a steely fashion. "That means go, love."

"I'm not coming with you. There's someone out there with powers like mine. I need to find out who. I, I can't just hide out in some sheriff's station."

He likes that kind of smile, that abrupt one that apologizes for making a decision, not because it is a decision made, mind you, but that they know full well they'll do it whether you like it or not. It always opens the person up to be surprised.

"Oh, well, that works out quite nicely then, because that's not where we're going."

"It's not?"

Stop feigning being slow on the uptake, lass, and enjoy catching a break...

"With Emma running into danger? Not a chance in hell. And the sheriff's station's that way."

"And what's that way?" she asks, gesturing to the portion of the street behind him. Raising an eyebrow, he grins.

"With any luck? Danger." Her halfhearted apprehension gives way to fascination as she hurries up to him.

Swan knows him too well, knows how rapidly cabin fever would set in if he just waited around at the station while she bought right into some villain's cry for attention. Magic worked against her last night, but it won't today, not when there is a whole shop of magical tools at their disposal, and that crocodile, thinking he was so clever, that his own wife will stay fooled forever. Oh, he knows Belle well enough to know their alliance wouldn't be enough to dissuade her from not believing him. But, as he's learned over the years, words don't necessarily need to be believed; they just need to be acknowledged as genuine, and Belle is too intrepid a woman to not want to prove him wrong. She would use the dagger to show him, show the pirate who attacked her only a year ago, how wrong he is, would conjure up some harmless task for her husband to perform and when he didn't...

It won't even come to that, he tells himself. The coward won't allow it to go that far. Straightening his back, he makes sure he strolls inside.

"I must apologize, but I'm really rather busy today," he says without looking up from the counter.

"And here I was hoping for a warm hello from the newly-reformed Mr. Gold!" Just how did he not burst at this confining life of being Mr. Gold? Mr. Gold might have the town under his thumb, might be the ruler of this little shop, but it didn't lend itself to magic, or the passion of seeking it out, for that matter.

"This is still a place of business, so unless you have something to offer me, I'm afraid I can be of no further help."

"Well, as it turns out, I do have something to offer you. My silence." Ah, the affluent shopkeeper facade cracking enough to allow a murderous glare. Killian pauses, letting him break an invisible sweat. He shifts, takes on that condescending tone just so he can hear it come out of someone else's mouth. "See, I know that that dagger you gave Belle is a fake."

"Is that right?"

"I've hunted you a long time, my old crocodile, and I know you better than most. And I know that you would never let anyone have power over you. Not even Belle."

"And you expect her to believe you without a shred of proof?" Not even denying it, the cad. There he stands, expecting him to be a buffoon and be deterred by such trifles. Pretending he's thinking it through, he smirks at the lack of amusement on the face staring at him.

"Well I could ask her to summon you with the dagger. And then, when it doesn't work—proof."

"That's a very dangerous insinuation."

His heart quickens at the deathly whisper. It takes more effort than he'd care to admit to remain stone-faced and unreadable. Just as his throat hitches, he manages to cover it.

"So we have a deal?"

It takes an eternity for a smile to stretch across Rumpelstiltskin's face, only the beginnings of teeth showing themselves as he lets out a soft, piteous sigh.

"I do hope Miss Swan is worth it," he whispers.

Never you mind, he tells him with his smug grin.

"Good news!" he calls over to Elsa, who has been busying herself by skimming over the relics and trinkets on the far end of the counter behind the glass. "He's agreed to help."

She wastes no time, addressing him without fear as she makes her way to them.

"This hair is from Marian. Someone cast a freezing curse on her. We need to know who it is."

Examining the hairs, he transfers them from one hand to the other, holding them up and ever so slightly smoothing them with the pads of his fingers.

"Well, you're in luck. Magic can change forms, but never be destroyed," he reminds them. "We'll simply return it to its natural state." Hovering one hand above the other, he sweeps it around until the ends of the hairs sway in time with it and dissolve into nothing more than snowflakes.

"Snowflakes," Elsa scoffs, watching them flurry around with an expression that says she should have known. She looks over at him, but he isn't the one who can give them new information.

"Magic similar to yours, dearie, though not quite the same. Much like a snowflake, each person's magic is unique," Rumpelstiltskin explains, watching the little blizzard in his palm with a hungry look. He'd have a taste of every person's unique brand of magic if he could, and, gods, he did not just blackmail the bloody Dark One for more snow and pretty words.

"Poetic," he grunts. "How does that help us?"

"Well, magic seeks out like-magic, so if I set this free..." He blows on the snowflakes and like a swarm of bees, they flutter together in a loose huddle toward the door. "...it should find its way home, back to the person who cast it."

He won't thank him, merely glance over at Elsa to signal that it's time to continue this on foot for who knows how long. Swallowing and shuffling back out onto the sidewalk, he remembers the last time he followed magic out of the shop. Not this time, he thinks, keeping his chin parallel to the ground. A little cloud of snowflakes is not going to lure him into some witch's trap again. Fate may like being cruel to him, but Elsa has had a streak of only good luck upon escaping the urn.

* * *

><p>The snowflakes whip right and left into the woods...of course. It's been long enough that the idea of the crocodile sending them out with the intent to get them lost has crossed his mind more than once. A shame he didn't bring along a supply of breadcrumbs to mark their route; however, his hook works fine for marking notches into the trees that run along the path.<p>

"What are you doing?" Elsa asks as he digs the hook into the tree with more force, two careless slashes.

"Leaving a trail I'm more accustomed to outrunning bad weather than following it," he says.

"Snow isn't bad." Well, a queen who can control it and never had to sail through blizzards would say such a thing, wouldn't she? Flashes of icy waves crashing onto the deck fill his mind, each droplet feeling more like the tip of a sword than liquid. "And we're following _magic_."

Semantics.

"Try to outrun that, too, when given the chance." He won't deny he's owed his life to magic on more than one occasion, but few people are as community-minded about it as Swan is. A soft chuckle from Elsa, her eyes still on the path in front of them, pricks the hairs on the back of his neck. "What's so funny?"

"It's just that Emma has magic and you _clearly _don't want to outrun her."

"More like the other way around." He flexes his tongue, fixing it so it presses against the back of his teeth. Barricading the town, nearly freezing Emma, laughing at him—he should despise Elsa, should be reluctant to dignify her little observation with eye contact, let alone words.

"Maybe she feels the same way about pirates as you do about magic."

Ha! Shows how little she knows.

"I've worked to change...though in fairness, being a pirate is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly a charming one like me-self." It elicits a smile, which was the point, but he shakes his head at how defensive she's rendered him. Emma loves him. Those three words cause his breath to hitch, still too incredible to truly believe, but she does, and he loves her and hasn't had any interest in hiding it. In fact, it would be mad _not _to want to be with her after all this time, so who is some ice woman new to town to contradict any of that? And what does she know about pirates, or magic, or Swan...or why other than that comforting, glorious invitation to share her bed with her last night she's been evading his company and he's so damn frustrated about it all...

"I think your self-appreciation is blinding you to a simple fact—this isn't about you. It's about her," she says knowingly, her smile not yet leaving her face.

"Is that right? A few short days and you know Emma so well?"

"We're a lot alike," she answers, almost shrugging but then curving her mouth into a frown. "When you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, it can be hard to let people in, to trust them, even when they want what's best for you."

He nearly stops, trying to read her. She isn't Swan, so it doesn't come as naturally, but the wrinkle between her eyebrows, the faraway look in her eyes—she knows what she's talking about. That orphan look, that familiarity with being alone most of the time, wanting, craving contact but at the same time fearing it...

Swan trusts you, he tells himself. Doesn't she? After all they'd been through... He'd thought she did, but perhaps somehow she'd built her walls even higher right under his nose. He'll have to keep trying. It's what he's told himself in one way or another since he'd bloody met her, and here he was miles from where she believed he currently was.

Well, if it's a choice between her trust and her safety, he'll have to settle for the latter.

* * *

><p>Elsa's sensed he is in no mood to discuss his personal life any longer, the duration of the journey in a brooding silence. If Swan doesn't trust you after all this time, what else can you do—no, no, no. That will have to wait. Dragging the heels of his boots into the dirt keeps him in the here and now, his eyes glued to the snowflakes. Flurrying once more, they settle onto the jagged remains of a young tree already topped with snow.<p>

"I'd say we're on the right track," he says to himself.

"Yes." Folding her arms, she waits, scanning the woods on her tiptoes, her usual calm demeanor wavering. A white figure emerges from a row of trees, so pallid it gets lost in the air behind the foliage. Just a glimmer of a silhouette indicates it is a woman walking by. "There she is, look."

"Get down," he orders her, guiding her by the small of her back down behind a fallen log. Seeing the woman open her arms and manipulate the snow fails to add much sense to this calamity. Woman freezes someone and traps everyone within the town only to hide out in the forest? He's tempted to rise just a little in order to get a better look, but a voice screams in his head. It's magic. She's doing magic and he is not going to be stuck against that with only Elsa's volatile powers to defend him.

Reaching into his pocket, he stares at his phone and sees the reliable screen that has Swan's name on it. Then the button Henry had shown him—it gets easier every time.

"What is that thing?" Elsa whispers.

"It's a device for...talking..." he trails off, suddenly too aware of how poorly he can explain it. "I don't bloody know. I press the 'Emma' button and she answers, usually." Now is _not _the time to figure out the specifics of such a process. The ringing gives way to an all-too-casual "Hey, this is Emma. Leave a message."

That beep afterwards. He hates it. How? How can she not answer in the midst of an investigation?

"Why should I carry around this ridiculous thing if you're never there when I use it?" he blurts out, inhaling and glancing back around to make sure the woman didn't hear him. Sighing and lowering his voice, he adds, "We found the person who froze Marian. Get to the west edge of the woods right away."

Ending the call, it occurs to him if she does call back, the woman will hear it...but Swan's used to this sort of thing. She'll know from how low he talked into the thing to not call back.

Then again, if Elsa is fool enough to be standing up...his hand flies up onto her shoulder and doesn't hesitate to apply enough pressure to bring her back down.

"What the bloody hell are you doing?" he scolds her.

"Sorry. I've never seen someone like me before." Her brow furrows. "She doesn't look evil."

Need we go back and inspect the frozen woman lying stiff as a board on the mayor's sofa, he considers shouting at her.

"Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving, love. So let's just stay out of sight. I haven't a fondness of icebergs and I'd rather avoid being turned into one." They'll just have to sit and wait for Swan to arrive...precisely what he had been against doing in the first place. Setting his jaw, he wonders if this whole endeavor will end up a disaster.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Coming up? You guys are in for a treat.**


	7. A Woman of Ice and Fire

The woman in white stands, just stands. Every once in a while, her hands reconstruct the air around them to add to her light-catching model fortress. There's not a clue to be gleaned from it, though...and that makes for unnerving reconnaissance.

"We've waited long enough. We have to find Emma," he whispers to Elsa. The curiosity that had almost overcome her twenty minutes ago had flattened out into objectivity. Perhaps the advice...unsolicited advice...she'd given him earlier had triggered memories of her sister.

There isn't too much of a need to be soundless, which is rather fortunate given the amount of dried leaves, some framed with frost, around them. He'd marked the trail, and the woman apparently believed she could take her time with whatever scheme she'd concocted, so it should be nothing to go out the way they came, regroup, and... His foot stuck, his other almost tripping at the sudden stop in his gait. He didn't remember having to avoid a divot...

He looks down and sees nothing but ice, the hem of his coat swishing around his frozen leg with every twist of his torso. It won't budge.

"I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't let you leave."

"What?"

She's not old, is the first thought that punches through a stream in his brain struggling to maintain calm. Her features soft and hard at the same time, she hardly casts him a look, fixated on Elsa. But it's the way she looks at Elsa, familiar with her, a nigh-motherly look.

"Let go of him now!" Elsa commands, locking her arm out and wielding her own hand like a weapon.

"Not when you and I have so much catching up to do...my sweet Elsa," the woman argues in such a damned soothing tone.

"Catching up? What? You _know _her?" He'll kill her, not for luring him out here and freezing him, although that would have more than earned it, but they all took her in, that _they _gave her their promises, their home, their help...it can't be true.

"I've never seen her before," Elsa says without taking her eyes off the woman. Good. The worry that hangs in the air as much as Anna's disappearance, the mild but grateful relief on her face whenever she's around Emma—all genuine. Good.

"You've simply forgotten."

"I wouldn't forget someone like you," Elsa says a little too quickly. "Like me."

"The magic of the rock trolls," the woman answers, gathering up the skirt of her gown and pacing around her. For only a moment, she reminds him of Cora. "They pull memories. They did quite a number on you, I'm afraid."

Oh, bloody hell. First thing he'll do if this ice around him ever melts, he'll see what all it will take to make memories a little more magic-resistant.

"The rock trolls? Why would they do that to me?"

"For the same reason they did it to your sister, Anna. Some memories are too painful."

"You know Anna? What happened to her?" Elsa marches toward her, and he knows all too well it's always a lie that comes next. The only reason a villain wants a hero closer to them is when it works to the villain's advantage.

"The same thing that happens to every ordinary person," she says, summoning the hate right from her throat. "Eventually they grow to fear us. You wonder how you ended up trapped in that urn. It was your sister. Anna put you there."

"You're lying," Elsa snarls at her, unbending. He takes her faith in Anna as an opportunity to check his leg, maybe wiggle out toward a weak spot.

"Am I? Look at the people in this town. They're ready to burn you at the stake."

"Because of what you did! You hurt one of them!" she nearly screams in horror. He tries to burrow his foot into the dirt, tunnel under the ice somehow. She can't panic. He's seen what she can do when she panics.

"You mean that woman? Marian? Well, that was an accident." She has to suppress a shrug.

"No, it wasn't," Elsa growls at her, the resolve in her face more than enough assurance she won't panic now. The words aren't jabbing their way under her skin, not even cracking the surface. "You wanted them to think it was me, to blame me. Why?"

"I was trying to teach you a lesson." Flashing her a sad smile, the ice woman finally turns her attention back to him. "Eventually, everyone turns on people like us, even friends. Even family. They're just waiting for a reason." She speaks so softly it's as though she trails off, her arm curving over her head. Row after row of icicles crackle down the treetops right over his head. Grunting, he braces himself for the ice to cut through his leg as he breaks out of it. It will sting only for a second, the hot, piercing sensation of blood dripping down your skin. But it doesn't come.

"What are you doing?" Elsa's hands fly up.

"Don't bother. I've neutralized your magic."

Oh hell...not even a hint of the creaking sound of breaking ice. Bending over, he grips the ice with his hand, and he realizes cold can burn. Hardly any water brushes his palm, the ice too solid.

"When your friend is found, you'll look responsible," the ice woman says, louder. "Then they'll turn on you and they'll treat you as the monster that they truly see you as, and you'll know I'm right!"

"No!" Elsa cries.

"Hey! Dairy Queen!" He knows that snark, knows Swan's there before he reaches his full height to look up. He steals a glance over at the woman, wanting to see her arm perform the movements that will make the icicles fall and run him through, wanting to fixate on what will bring him the most pain...there's no time to think about why. In fact, he about does a double take at how still the ice woman has become, arm mid-air, only a deep swallow in her throat indicating she's even still alive.

"Emma?"

He's not enjoying this familiarity.

"Do we know each other?" Swan calls back to her. The woman controls her face.

"Of course not. Your reputation precedes you." Even moving now, lowering her arm, she looks only half-alive. The words sound practiced, a far cry from the way she'd blurted out her name mere seconds ago. "You really think that your magic is a match for mine?"

"There's only one way to find out." He'd thought she'd been heaving from the run to them, but it's just as likely it was to build herself up enough to shoot out a blast of magic strong enough to knock the woman right down to the ground. It's a violent gust; had he not been restrained from the ice, it would have trampled over him, too, and for a split second before David rushes toward him, he realizes Swan's magic has a distinct feel to it—as bright and windy as emerging onto the main deck of a ship after being down in the cargo hold.

He looks down at David, chipping away at the ice with a knife. In spite of himself, he looks back up at the icicles...he should really stop staring at everything out there hell-bent on killing him... He breathes a "no" to them as he watches a few in front of him snap off from the branches and pierce the dirt in front of him. More and more break free and shatter upon the hard ground.

He feels it again—sunlight and wind with a dash of cinnamon and warmth. It knocks his torso first, reeling him and David several feet from the ice without a chance to take a gulp of breath. Chunks plop against his arms and the hilt of his sword, and he winces at the sensation of his coat tightening around the shoulders...David's gripped the back of his collar.

"You guys okay?" Swan gasps.

Never better, he thinks, grunting as he turns his head to check David. No need, the hearty prince already staggering to his feet.

"Where is she?" David asks. Killian's heels shuffle against the dirt on his way up, not about to be that easy a target to the ice woman. Scanning the forest, he catches no glimpse of white, not a murmur of her unruffled voice.

"She's gone," Swan sighs, biting her lip.

"We'll fan out," David says, glancing back at him before sprinting off toward a row of pine trees. Elsa spins back around, but then stills, mesmerized by the tiny model the ice woman had been constructing. He takes it as a hint not to bother asking if she's all right and instead veers off in the opposite direction of David's search.

"Whoa, where are you going now?" Swan's not even bothering to head him off, confident her reached-out fist will tether him.

"I don't take too kindly to almost being impaled."

"Sure as hell seems like you do," she huffs at him. "Stay here with Elsa."

"Swan—"

"I don't think it's a good idea for her to be all alone with a snow queen running around," she almost sings as she sprints...make no mistake, _sprints_, in the direction where he had started for, not looking back.

Shuffling around, he exhales at the model of the fortress, loud enough that Elsa will hear, but she doesn't turn. They won't be gone long, he tries to assure himself, pacing around the ice model...as if she would come back for it. The "snow queen" announces when she wants to be found and has proven to be all too skilled at making herself scarce when she doesn't. That, that still is what bothers him the most about her, even more than acting like she knew Emma. Anyone who knew Emma and had nothing to hide would have made sure they found her long before now.

David returns first, shaking his head.

"No sign of her, not even tracks," Swan sighs, approaching them, unable to keep still. Hands on her hips, she paces the same little line of land, no longer than her own person.

"What is it? You okay?" Swan answers with an eyebrow lift, a clear _I am not okay _with more than a little _idiot _added to the end of it. Fortunately, David has enough fatherly experience behind him now to not be perturbed by it. "Hey, we're going to find her. Don't let Regina shake your confidence."

"It's not that. It's this Snow Queen. It's like she didn't just know Elsa. She knew me, too."

Truth be told, if _he _had just had his memories returned to him after a year's time, he'd find every little thing that failed to make sense dodgy, too, but she's an open book, her mind crossing out every possible explanation except for the worst ones.

"Well, you are the sheriff, and the Savior, and royalty...I think pretty much everyone in Storybrooke knows who you are."

"There's something more," she argues. "It's like when she said my name, I, I, I don't know...it sounded familiar."

Said familiar, or _felt _familiar, he considers asking, but she's avoided looking at him ever since she came back from her search, and he's actually beginning to feel relieved she didn't find her.

"Well, we'll figure it out, but today you did good. You stopped her. It was a pretty impressive show, Sheriff," David reassures her, a small smile his thanks.

"That it was," he tries, and for now he will ignore the utterly pissedexpression he's receiving. "But perhaps we should keep searching, find the villain's lair as it were."

"So you can almost get yourself killed again? That's exactly why I told you to go to the sheriff's station!" she snaps at him, almost pushing his shoulder with hers to march back over to Elsa.

* * *

><p>David drives him back to Granny's in silence, although not an angry one, he notes, resting his chin on his knuckles. Gods knew where Swan and Elsa had gone, and as confident as he is that David does not share his daughter's cold disdain at the moment, it's too fragile a confidence to inquire about the next course of action.<p>

"Regina? Is Robin with you? Got a few questions for him," he hears David speaking.

A newly discovered downside to these talking phone things is how childlike not being involved in the conversation can be, he concludes, his forehead brushing the window.

"Uh huh...well, it's more a recap of where all you went today, who all you talked to. If we can trace back where you and Marian were all day, we might be able to get a handle on...what's that?...she just gave it to her, free of charge?" The tone pulls Killian out of his reverie long enough to look over at David, who is giving him a meaningful look, but, again, not involved in the conversation. He sets his jaw. "And after that, you came straight to the mayor's office. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a lead...right, do not go back there, especially with Roland...okay...believe me, Robin, as soon as we find out more, you'll hear from us."

He waits for David to end the call and place the phone back in his pocket, lest he be accused of jumping into danger again...

"Marian had some ice cream right before she started freezing."

"Mate, even I've had ice cream in this world and freezing, alas, wasn't a side effect."

"Then I guess you also know it's not a great idea to accept free food from strangers in this world," he counters.

"What?"

"Robin took Marian to the ice cream parlor and the lady there gave her a cone for free, the same shop Emma and I were investigating earlier today. None of the ice cream melted during the power outage. Not only that, but when we got there, the back room is frozen. None of the..." He tightens his lips and sighs. "The machines used to keep things cool..."

"Coolers."

"Among other things... Anyway, none of it's used."

"So it's all frozen by magic," he concludes, nodding. "And, let me guess, the Snow Queen runs the place. Who is she?"

"Don't know yet," he says as he stops right in front of Granny's. "We kind of went in there illegally."

"The last thing you want is for her to know you're closing in on her. Next thing you know, she'll be making herself disappear completely. We won't see her at all, not until she wants us to." A thought strikes him. "Who was she in our world?"

"I don't know."

He doesn't recall her from the survivor's hold, but then he also didn't recall ever hearing about a woman with ice powers once he was back in the Enchanted Forest. Names of royalty traveled faster than any other news of the day, birds littering the skies with messages whenever anything throne-related changed, and he's sure if a kingdom came to be run by a witch or sorceress or some such he'd have heard about it for no other reason than he was sure the Dark One would have been privy to such information. Contrary to what he said to Elsa earlier, he supposes he hadn't tried all that hard to outrun magic.

But Swan outrunning him—maybe that much hadn't changed at all.

She loves you.

Aye, but she doesn't trust you, he argues with himself, well aware that response didn't feel quite right. But what else could it mean? She'd avoided him, literally ran hot and cold, and now spurned his help. With barely a nod to David serving as a goodbye, he leaves the car and takes a swig from his flask.

* * *

><p>Aurora has had her baby. The small bump he'd eyed on her eons ago was now a tiny lad and the only quiet person in the diner, everyone else raising a glass and toasting her and what's-his-name...Philip. Just as well, he thinks, taking one look at the festivities inside and sliding into one of the outdoor chairs instead. Just this afternoon they'd all been ready to pounce on Elsa and do all matter of angry mob violence to her, and now here they were celebrating another new arrival. He takes a swig from his flask, swishing the rum around in his mouth. If he is to pretend hiding out here is anything other than sulking, he'll need some indulgence to close out the day.<p>

It doesn't make sense. Swan trusts him with Henry, for gods' sakes. Henry! Her precious child. They've gone through so much, the trust unspoken for the most part, but unmistakably there, the trip to the past alone confirmation of that.

And yet, he thinks, burning a hole into the flask with his eyes, he has no magic of his own. That is something he will never completely relate to, and even Elsa expressed some memory of feeling alone after going on and on about her beloved sister, so trusted _now _she refused to believe the Snow Queen's aspersions against her.

But it doesn't mean he doesn't want to try to understand, and now he'll have to find a way to show her that sentiment.

The bell jingles in front of him and Swan comes out, of all people, hurrying through the courtyard looking like a storm cloud, her eyes fixed on everything in front of her—not him.

Opportunity knocks, or rather, jingles.

"Swan! Don't make a man drink alone."

"Not in the mood for a drink. Or a man," she mutters, already passing under the trellis. He springs up and chases her into the street.

"I'm sorry I didn't listen to you today. All right, I know you feel like you've got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but at some point..." His hook catches her wrist, but it doesn't force her to turn around and face him. She does that on her own. "Even though we're quite different, you've got to trust me."

It's backfiring. Horrendously. She's never looked so incredulous.

"That's what you think this is about? That I don't trust you?" she snaps.

"Is that not what it's about?" Bloody infuriating woman...

"Of course I trust you!"

"Then why do you keep pulling away from me?"

"Because everyone I've ever been with is dead!" He flinches as if she cut him. At once he sees the anguish in her face, her breath hitching, shoulders rising, not fighting off the tears so much as keeping them at bay. Not hiding them, rather, not letting them impair her from explaining herself.

"Neal and Graham..." she chokes out, and the little swallow she makes as she is determined to look him in the eye does him in, his own eyes welling with tears. So much pain, so much loss for someone so undeserving. "Even Walsh. I lost everyone. I can't lose you, too."

You bloody idiot, he chides himself as he can't help but melt at the intense way she looks at him. She doesn't love you. She _loves _you. And you've caused her nothing but worry and pain today, added one more burden.

"Well, love, you don't have to worry about me," he says, unable to take his eyes off a single tear streaming down to a tentative smile. "If there's one thing I'm good at, it's surviving."

Her smile broadens just a fraction more. How hard that must have been for her...how much sorrow's already hit her. He'll put as much trust in her as she just did in him and close the gap between them. It had always been her decision before, but, closing his eyes and pulling her into him, she needs to feel how dear she is to him.

He couldn't utter the words just yet, but come hell or high water he would show her, show her just what it does to him that she cares, that she _can't lose him_. The words buzz throughout his brain until they settle into that space reserved only for the happiest thoughts, memories one immediately knows will be revisited again and again.

His hand moves into her hair as he kisses her, letting his eyes close and roll back into his head. Her arm pins itself into his waist and so slowly, her fingers curl around him. For a split second, his eyes snap open to ensure this isn't a product of his imagination, and then, when she sighs into his mouth, they fall closed again and it's noses nudging against each other and heat sweeping through his veins.

Everything falls into a warm haze...or at least it seems to be since he's not sure how they've backed their way out of the street. There is the soft thud of her shoulder blades hitting the glass display window. About to comment, about to tear his lips off of her so he can dip his forehead down onto hers and spout off some foolish thing, she stops him. She stops him by one of her hands snaking up his back and into his hair, tugging downward relentlessly until he begins sucking on her neck. It's too much—her hair curtaining them, every thought drowning in her scent—too much to resist.

There's nothing to anchor him, so he keeps his eyes closed. Nothing to temper this dizzy falling sensation as his hand burrows into her jacket, her shirt, _gods,_ her bare back, eliciting a shiver that runs all the way down her body.

"Killian," she pants into his cheek.

_Again_, his mind screams, pressing into her. And yet all he can manage is a growl that's met with quite the audible gasp. Their hips meet. Their legs tangle as she juts one out and tries to wrap it around his in an attempt to hoist herself up. Of all the places and ways he's dreamed of their first time, this most certainly isn't one of them, he thinks with ragged breaths, up against the wall of a bridal shop. It should be somewhere bathed in more ambiance, more privacy...a hand is groping its way down to the flesh just above his belt. Well then, let the lady decide...

He switches arms so his hooked one can act as a perch for her and keep her wedged in between himself and the window, the other gliding down her front. He stops at her collarbone, gasping at the fact if he drops just a bit lower, he'll feel her heart thrumming against him. The thought breaks their kiss just long enough for him to chase her lips with his, breathing her in, unable to stop trembling.

"I-" he swears he hears moaning its way out of her. The enticing warmth of her lips, her hands, her flesh is suddenly searing.

A snapping sound pierces the silence and fills the air with a burning odor. It's instinct, shielding her and sidestepping out of the way of shards of glass bursting from above them. Fragments of light crash to the ground from the streetlight above them.

She hisses and recoils in such a way his first thought is that she's been cut. He backs up enough to see her holding her thigh. Where his hook had been.

"Did I hurt you?"

She bites her lip and gives the spot an irritated look, but then instead of answering, she looks up and stares at the broken streetlight with her mouth hanging open. Without an answer, he reads her face, noting how slack it's all gone except for something behind her eyes, so honed in on the shattered glass surrounding them he has to bend his head down to see that it's dread.

"Swan? All right?"

"What?" she asks, snapping out of her trance. In an exaggerated, disjointed movement, she tenses her abdomen and slips her hand down her trousers to check her thigh. "Just a scratch. Skin's not even broken."

"Are you sure?" he asks, furrowing his brow at how she keeps looking up at the light.

"Yeah, yeah...you didn't get cut, did you?" She sweeps her fingers around the back of his neck, grazing around to the hollow of his throat. She tightens her lips and once more takes in the tiny glimmers around them, the dread not leaving her face. He scratches his ear and shuffles out around the mess, locking out his elbow to keep his hook as far from both of them as he can.

The mood's destroyed, regrettably. They share the same look, masking guilt, trying to not look ashamed. The horrified expression on her face after just looking like she'd been in absolute heaven prods and pulls his concern onto a new course, her hand not even on her thigh anymore.

"Swan?"

The dead smile answers him, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes now.

"I'll, I'll just see you tomorrow. Right?" Before he can answer, assure her he'd see her every day of their lives if it were completely up to him, she pecks his cheek and disappears into the night.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I've seen some discrepancies in regards to a few lines in this chapter, but I listened to clips several times and checked it against two transcript sites, so I apologize if you hear something else. I always strive to get the correct dialogue, so if I can't for the life of me figure out a line and throw in what I think it is, feel free to message me. The chapter title is a reference to _A Song of Ice and Fire._**


	8. The Deal

She's asked him out. There had been some breathless ranting, her eyes darting to and fro, eyelashes batting like they always do, and he is quite sure he's not flattering himself by simply imagining her blush at her adorable "pillage and plunder" quip. She has asked him out, and now it's his turn to reflect on what she must have earlier—that in over a year's time, he's never really courted her.

Back in his room, he sinks to his knees and slides the phonebook out from under the bed, a thin layer of dust brushing against the tip of the comforter. He'd found it an irreplaceable resource when he'd first arrived, but without need for one in Neverland, or the Enchanted Forest for that matter, he'd needed to find another one once he was back in Storybrooke, to stay here as long as Emma would allow. Flipping through the flimsy pages, he skips the residential numbers and arrives at the yellow business section, skimming across the tops for "restaurants."

He pops his eyes, running his tongue over his teeth at how he missed the fact that the thing had bloody illustrations in it. A full page devotes itself to what looked like a promising place, a...landscape...he still doesn't know if that applies to "photographs"...of people dining taking up the top portion. The bottom relays the information, this "Tony's" being a fresh, relaxing dining experience, the number, and even a tiny square map marking its location. On the other side of town...he hides his smile into his knuckles. As soon as Swan had left, the first thing he had decided was that they would not be spending the evening at Granny's as he would wager any amount she stopped in there at least once every day, if only for a cup of coffee.

Reaching for the phone on the table, his hand hovers over it. No. No, he can be a man of this world and use his gift from Swan and Henry. Aye, that's it—he will call this new place on his own phone. Well aware the swelling confidence he's feeling is disproportionate to the task, he pushes the correct series of buttons and listens to the ringing sound.

"Tony's, a fresh, relaxing dining experience. What can I do for you today?" a less-than-perky male voice groans back at him.

"Yes, I would like to place a reservation for tonight."

"How many?"

"Two." Tone it down, he tells himself. There is no need to make up for the unseen man's lack of enthusiasm. He hopes it isn't the proprietor.

"Name?"

"Oh, er, Killian Jones."

"Time?"

He and Swan hadn't exactly discussed a time. No matter. His phone could reach her easily after he was finished here, perhaps even figure out how to send one of those scripted messages to keep as much of it a surprise as possible.

"Eight," he throws out.

"Okay, reservation made. Thank you." He hears that distinct click of the conversation ending, so he gazes back down at the picture in the advertisement and frowns. That had been absurdly easy. Raising an eyebrow at the phone's screen, he pushes the numbers again.

"Tony's, a fresh, relaxing dining experience," he hears in the same tone as before.

"Yes, I just called and made a reservation..."

"Were you canceling it?"

"No." Honestly, the amount of apathy staggers him. "I, I was merely wondering if there was anything else you or I needed to know."

"Look, dude, it's all penciled in. Jones, party of two, eight o'clock tonight. You can Google a map to find us, the phone number is...you can look that up. Wear a collared shirt and don't smoke. Pretty self-explanatory," the man grunts at him.

"Quite right, sir. Thank you for your time," he says, himself the one to end the conversation this time since nothing else is required. Well then, he inhales. That was the easy part. After a beat, he flips the pages backward to "clothing." There won't be a full-page advertisement this time, but that may be for the best. A place that feels no need to draw attention to itself either can't afford to, which means no one else will be there, or it doesn't need to, in which case it will be a madhouse and he might have to wait until the shoppers start clearing out before going in. Running his finger down the page, he stops at a shop called Modern Fashions and snorts a silent laugh. Original name indeed. One might as well name the grocery Food Store while they were at it. It doesn't bode well for their selection or quality; nevertheless, he memorizes the address and heads out his room, down the stairs, and out the door.

* * *

><p><em>Need some help planning a date? :)<em>

Squinting, he has to cock his head before he deciphers it's a smile, Swan's question meant to be taken in jest. The sun creates a glare on the screen, so he steps onto the sidewalk and under an awning, certain this will take a fair amount of time. The sign for Modern Fashions stares at him from the end of the street. He wishes the same could be said for its hours. Holding out the phone, he stretches his thumb over the buttons to reply.

_No need. I will be at the apartment at seven thirty. _He smirks and adds, _Also no need for a smiling face as no doubt you are delighted by this news._

Sending it, he doesn't even have time to put the phone back into his pocket before he stops mid-step to read her reply.

_:)_

He grins.

* * *

><p>He'd scrutinized the clothes longer than he had planned, stepping away from them and inspecting them with his chin in his hand, contemplating the size, the stitching, the durability, the appropriateness. It wasn't too far removed from what he usually wore, and the shop mercifully had a back room, back <em>closet<em>, for the purposes of determining if it fit or not. Undressed in front of a full-length mirror with foreign clothes had initiated a countless number of stalling blinks and several mental reassurances that a waistcoat, while not a doublet, was put on the same way here as it was anywhere else. The trousers did not have laces, but rather a strange metallic strip that made a zipping noise when he pulled up on it, efficient and also potentially dangerous.

The more he puts on, the more his breathing returns to normal, the more the features in the mirror loosen. Pulling his arm through the sleeve of a shorter, sleeker black jacket and rolling his shoulders around in it, he nods at himself, confident he can adorn it all again without calling Granny or Ruby, or, even worse, Swan herself to talk him through it. When the time came for the latter to be ready to watch him add and remove layers, he was going to know what he was doing.

The new clothes back on their hangers, he stops buttoning his blouse halfway down and examines himself in the mirror. And what if that time was tonight? What if, at some moment, they repeated last night's showing of affections, and, what if, like last night, his ruddy hook got the better of her?

He'll just need to be careful.

Can you, he asks himself, finishing buttoning his shirt...not as distracting as he'd hoped it would be. It doesn't even need to come down to, to _that_, he thinks with a great intake of air, his body suddenly feeling on fire. It could come down to something as innocent as a hug. He'd been too worried the night before last when he'd thrown his arms around her at the ice wall to consider it, but he has until seven thirty tonight to consider it now. Just one wrong flick of his wrist...

She's never cared about it before, he tells himself, adamant about treating the act of putting his trousers back on as business-like a motion as he could.

They've also never gone on a date before.

And what if, in the heat of a moment, she wanted affection? In the heady, wonderful times they'd lost track of the rest of the world, his hook had kept itself at bay, but surely at some point a situation would come in which he'd have to take off the harness completely and expose the pitiful little stump that was the end of his arm or else leave it on and take his chances. Neither prospect gives him much to look forward to.

She's never cared about that sort of thing.

Aye, but either way is on the opposite end of the perfection spectrum.

Had he the other one back, there would be no fear interrupting anything. Recalling some explicitly vivid dreams as he uses the hook for a brace as he laces his boots, he realizes more than some of what he desires to do teeters into the realm of impossibility...and he desires it with a mouth-watering intensity. To touch more than one place at a time on her would be a thousand times more intoxicating than any drink, not to mention a thousand times more addictive.

Everything stops. His coat and new clothes hanging on the hooks next to him feel miles away. The Dark One. How fitting would it be to regain his hand from the monster that severed it from him in the first place. He helped him and Elsa yesterday, proving in yet another way the dagger was in fact a fake, so why wouldn't he help again? Fair is fair, after all. If a man truly wanted to become better, and the crocodile flatly stated he _did _long to become better, the surest start would be righting past wrongs. They'd be helping each other in that regard.

He could also erase your memory of it at the drop of a hat, he warns himself as he gathers his things. He could steal your voice, plant some demon seed into your brain.

Ah, but he won't, he almost clucks his tongue out loud as he reaches into his pocket for some gold to give the clerk. Anything too catastrophic like that and it would disappoint dear Belle.

Quickening his pace, he hurries across the street and down to the pawn shop, for if he slows down at all he'll lose his nerve. Hook gone, the past, all of it, finally where it belongs. For everyone.

He bursts through the door and shuffles over the threshold, unleashing a silent laugh that Rumpelstiltskin isn't about as it was a less than professional entrance. No matter, he thinks, glancing over at the clock. He'll return from his respite, probably a lunch out with Belle, and find he has to gear himself up for work right away. Does the man even have regular customers? Doesn't anyone bloody care that their possessions from their previous lives are under an imp's lock and key? Pacing around, he runs his fingers over the glass rim of the display case, jewels and lockets glittering up at him. All belong to someone. The books on the shelves, the swords and scales, the dolls and bottles—none of it's his, not even the tiny crystalline unicorn mobile he taps just to see how it catches the light.

Propping himself up onto the counter, he places his wrists in his lap and runs his eyes over the paintings, refusing to feel like a thief. He isn't here to steal. He's here to take back what is rightfully his. The jittery feeling accompanying him is nerves, he tells himself, revulsion. Rolling his shoulders, he presses his tongue into the inside of his cheek and hopes this won't take long.

The bell on the door jingling is music to his ears.

"Making yourself at home, are we?" the crocodile growls at him, his rage palpable as he lets the door slam.

Home. What an ass.

"I'm here to make another deal," he says, being sure to smile.

"Not interested."

"Oh, you will be, unless you want Belle to learn the truth about your precious dagger."

"Tread carefully," he warns with a snarl, and it's just more confirmation. A part of him wishes the whole thing had been an error, that Belle had gotten it into her head to command him to do something, anything, and there would be unquestionable proof he'd put some effort into changing, do right by this woman he had bloody proposed to. He leaps off the counter and meets the crocodile head-on as he marches toward him. "I might just take your other hand."

"It's funny you say that, because my hand is exactly what I'm here about." There's a stillness on Rumpelstiltskin's face that stuns him. A cutting remark, recoiling at the memory of anything that happened on _that _day, perhaps even a display of violence—all those things he would have been prepared for, but to go completely still... He'd hounded him century after century and yet never actually saw him often enough to be able to read his face.

Wordlessly, the crocodile holds up a pointed finger and it directs him over to one of the lower shelves. There, among dusty mechanical things part of this realm and not the Enchanted Forest, he picks up a bulky glass jar and sets it on the counter.

Killian waits until he's strolled around the edge and is back on the other side of the counter in his proper place before stooping down to examine it. He wouldn't know it anymore, but it does match the one still attached to him. Pale and naked, it gives him an overall grotesque sensation, the illusion of it being enlarged by the shape of the glass not lost on him.

"You kept it all these years?" he murmurs, unable to say anything else. Kept among the rabble.

"Only to remind myself I should have finished the job when I had the chance," he snaps back, voice growing colder word by word.

"Can you reattach it?" he asks, eyeing the crocodile's fingers drumming the countertop.

"Indeed." A bemused smile lines across his face. "But the question is why?"

Because it's his. Because that should be enough. Because if the scheming pitiful coward truly had the decency to keep his promises to his simpering little wife, he'd have returned all these things to their rightful owners and gone into refuge on some hilltop. But he sets his jaw and closes his eyes. That's not the way to do this, he tells himself. Lie or make demands and you will most certainly come out of this empty-handed. Literally.

"I've got a date with Emma. Should things go well and she wants me to hold her," he settles on. "I want to use both hands." Now begins the ridicule.

"Oh I see blackmail brings out the romantic in you," the crocodile snarks, unable to decide if he considers the whole endeavor hilarious, pathetic, or a combination of both. "But this hand may bring out the worst."

There it is. The imp tone. The stupid hand transitions. All his silly parlor tricks to deceive his victims into believing he knows best.

"What the devil does that mean?" he scoffs.

"This hand belonged to the man you used to be, cunning, selfish pirate. If I reunite this with your body, there's no telling what influence it could have on you."

Well isn't that nice, a word of caution... He can feel his eyes starting to roll, but instead he finds himself staring at his hand, terror seizing him for a fraction of a second. If the Dark One tells you not to do a thing, it's only because he can't ensnare you afterward. And to think he almost fell for it...

"Sorry, Dark One," he laughs. "I'm not going to fall for your tricks today. Nothing can change me back." To prove his point, he starts twisting the hook off, feeling the familiar lightness that comes with removing it from the harness. "Now give me _my _hand, or Belle finds out exactly who she's married to, because unlike me, you haven't changed one bit. Crocodile." Never in a million years would he keep something like that from Emma, especially if she promised herself to him, but _especially _since he, somewhere along the line, promised himself to her without one regret since. And he _won't _be intimidated by the cold reptilian glare across from him.

"Very well," the Dark One whispers, waving his hand over the jar. A whooshing sound is all that registers with him, and then, suddenly, something tingles. Five tingles below his wrist elicit a shiver. He looks down at the same time he brings his hand up to him, still wet from the fluids in the jar, but it's attached. He can feel it. He can move it. True enough, it's not his sword hand or his writing hand, but already he feels _more_. Captain Hook doesn't feel like a lie lived a long time ago; rather it feels like foreign words flung at him from across a canyon, so garbled and nonsensical they can be ignored completely. Even the Dark One's "don't say I didn't warn you" can totally stifle his grin.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: While I'm immensely grateful to Springfield Springfield's transcripts (and I do mean "immensely"), I can't help but laugh because whenever someone does something magical, the transcript says "Whoosh," even when it's at the risk of sucking the drama out of a scene, so I did reference the whooshing sound in this chapter to honor that. Coming up? Pasta, wine, and astronomy.**


	9. Let the Words Slip Out of Your Mouth

Tongue rolling up to the roof of his mouth, eyes fixed, his head beginning to shake in disbelief—beautiful. He'll never doubt her ability to plan a date ever again. The soft pink dress and her hair swept up into a tail pale in comparison to the blushing, excited...and maybe just a touch lovestruck expression on her face. Dressed up for him. Excited that he's come.

"You look stunning, Swan."

"You...look..."

"I know," he teases, grinning at how quickly she gets over her embarrassment with herself. He doesn't want to take his eyes off her, but the old habit of taking in all his surroundings makes no exceptions tonight, he realizes, David, Snow, and Elsa in the corner of his peripheral vision. All still, just watching. "Now that I'm settling into this world, I finally thought it was time to dress the part." Part of him laughs. If they find his clothes striking, just wait. Holding out a rose he bought for her, he waits.

"Wow, you really went all out," she sighs, not tearing her gaze from him in the slightest.

"Uh, Emma?" her mother prompts her. Blinking out of a haze, her hand still on the stem, there's a comical, if silent, pause.

"Is that...?"

"Mine? Yeah. The Dark One kindly restored what he once took from me," he says, holding it up now that her grip on the stem's grown firmer. They'll ask why, he knows. Anyone with half a mind would, but he's a man of his word, his silence bought. "It seems he has indeed changed his ways."

"So...what do I call you now, Captain Hand?" she snarks, and, if he's to be honest with himself, he prefers this underwhelmed reaction, unsure precisely why. It isn't that she's not bombarding him with questions or isn't immediately asking to touch it. No, it's...it's not a significant change to her, and he had no idea until just now how much he likes that.

"'Killian' will do," he responds with a smile.

"Okay, Killian, we should get out of here before David decides to give you his overprotective-dad speech."

That's enough to grant the onlookers more attention, he thinks. It takes little time to meet the cold, not-quite-murderous look he knows has been waiting for him since the moment he'd knocked on the door. If he were a more sporting man, he'd play the part, straighten his posture even more and choke out a few "sirs" here and there, but he has a feeling it will take only a few more instances of parceling out buoying words to give David some faith.

"Well, you can spare yourself the trouble, mate. I assure you, your daughter couldn't be in better hands."

"That's exactly what worries me, especially now that you have two of them," David snaps back.

"I can take of myself," Swan says quickly, her steps to the door deliberately trying not to look rushed.

"You sure you don't want me to drive?" he calls to her.

"Goodbye," she sings. His hand on the small of her back, they move out onto the stairwell, faces mirroring each other in amusement. Needless to say, she waits until the door is completely closed before she even opens her mouth. "So two questions—where'd you get your new duds and where am I driving us?"

"Where's the fun in that? We aren't even outside yet."

"Yeah, yeah, I guess you could just blindfold me and tell me to steer in certain directions. Of course, that wouldn't take into account speed limits and whether or not I ram the car in front of us or I overcompensate and go so slow we get rear-ended..." she trails off, giving him a pointed, but not really stern, look.

"Fair enough. It's on the other side of town, and there _is _a clothing store in town, on the same street as Granny's."

"I'm surprised you didn't have Leroy or anyone dead-set on coming with us," she snorts as they step back outside, her yellow car waiting for them alongside the walkway.

"I may have not alerted certain parties to my plans for the evening," he says, stepping around to open her door for her. Ignoring her surprised reaction to the gesture, as if no one's ever done that for her before, he adds, "The dwarfs can be very insistent when it comes to socializing."

"That's the nice way to say it." Starting the car, she turns the wheel and angles the car backward until they're ready to join in the traffic on the street. "Although I guess if you had said it was with me Happy might have backed off."

"Why do you say that?" He isn't even sure which one Happy is.

"Something about all of us being gone in Neverland saving my son while he's shooting his mouth off about how peaceful it is when we're not around sort of lends itself to that conclusion, don't you think?"

"Aye, that would do it," he sighs, gazing out the windshield. After Neverland, when Henry was safe, was supposed to be when he started showing her a good time, giving her the fun she deserved. Leaning back into his seat, he watches her drive, shaking his head at how it had taken over a year.

* * *

><p>Swallowing, he inspects the shrubberies with the white lights strung over them everyone seems so fond of here for decoration. A vine-covered stone facade with a deep-set wooden door awaits them, a faint piano tune not meant to deflect attention from anything playing from somewhere.<p>

Their host must be afraid to speak, an addled-looking man with a broad, red-faced smile grabbing menus and bustling into another room with only a kindly nod to greet them. Breathe, he tells himself. Don't nitpick. Every other second he tries to read Swan's face as it takes in the new surroundings, deciding the collected, relaxed expression indicates satisfaction. But he'll ask just to make sure she hadn't had a run-in with some notable magical antagonist here.

"Well, Swan, what do you think?"

"I like that it's not Granny's," she says. About to tease her about her low standards, he instead shuffles in front of her and taps their mute host as a sign that _he _will be the one pulling the chair out for her, too mindful of how unexpected she'd found just opening a door for her.

"I've only seen you go on one date, and that was with a flying monkey. Thought I had to top that," he says, taking off his jacket.

"He set the bar pretty high. He _proposed _that night," she warns. It's not nearly as much a deterrent as she thinks it is.

"He also tried to kill you," he counters.

"Right. There's that," she concedes, unfolding her napkin and setting it on her lap as he finally slips his jacket over the back of the chair and sits. She looks up with her back bone-straight and her hands folded together in front with her fingers interlocking...then smoothing out the napkin...then back to the table flipping over each other in some slow-paced fight as to which will be on top. It's not a bloody interview, he thinks, clearing his throat. Everything until they'd sat down had been so effortless; they can't start trying too hard now.

"Shall I order us some drinks?" he offers.

"Not tonight."

"Why, love? You a bit worried you'll find me even more irresistible after a few libations?" Waggling an eyebrow at her until she smiles, rather apologetically, he notes, and begins mentioning the Snow Queen. He nods. He should have expected Swan to err on the side of caution.

"You still think her being here has something to do with you."

"I don't think it. I _know _it! There was a puddle next to my car this afternoon!"

Apparently even puddles now impede the two of them.

"A puddle," he repeats. "What does that prove?" It comes out harsher than he meant. Her jaw sets, but it's the way her mouth falls open, searching for words in such a deflated manner, that causes him to inhale and reach forward for both her hands.

"Look, Swan, I didn't bring you here to worry about the Snow Queen. I brought you here to show you a good time." He didn't mean to be discouraging and he'll devote every second of the next day to whatever investigation she wants to conduct, for it's too clear she does want to investigate this woman, but is it that selfish to let it go for a night? Watching helplessly while her father hoisted her drenched, motionless body onto the rain-soaked deck felt like lifetimes ago, but the feeling, the gnawing feeling that both of them are putting their lives on hold when they should be basking in every quiet reprieve they get before something disastrous happens remains fresh. He doesn't move until she smiles again, giving him that coy one he likes so much that tells him she's fully at ease. Smiling back, he signals to the man behind the bar over at the end of the room.

"Wine?"

"Sounds great," she says. "This place definitely doesn't have a rum and Coke vibe."

Their waiter approaches them with a tray with wine glasses and a bread basket atop it, and he just realizes he hasn't even skimmed the menu. He doesn't mind the slow pace; rather, it's easier to see his point that they need to make sure life slows down here and there for them.

At once, the waiter slams into the edge of the table, ricocheting backward onto the floor, bread flying everywhere, an entire glass' worth of wine spilling right into Emma's lap. He lifts himself out of his seat enough to find not the waiter excusing himself for tripping or anything harmless, but some imbecile making a show of hoisting the man up and dusting him off.

"Really?" Emma asks herself, her arms up, staring at her dress and starting to dab it with the napkin as the idiot rather boisterously inquires about the waiter's well-being. He'd done it on purpose, and he hadn't done it to slight the waiter. The whole petty gesture had been directed at her. He grabs onto the man's shirt before he can take off.

"Apologize to the lady, mate," he orders.

"Killian. Look, it's okay."

It should be okay. It shouldn't be that his knuckles turn white, that his grip is so tight his fist shakes. He'd been thinking...what had he been thinking? You know how to behave, he hears a little voice in him say, close enough to Liam's voice it immediately makes him let go. Tonight was no night for anyone to bring out the worst in him.

The worst in him... No, no, you will not let the crocodile's words get to you, he warns himself. It's what he wants. Bloody coward probably sent the man over here for this very reason, to rile you up. To make you look bad. To be that selfish pirate once more.

But what if he hadn't? He'd acted so instinctively, had been so ready to beat the man to a pulp without a second thought. There hadn't been time to make a choice, good or bad.

There would have been time if you weren't always so inclined to do the wrong thing...

"Killian? Hey, look." The hand, the new hand, he'd been burning a hole into suddenly has hers in it, and a surge of warmth flows through him as he feels her squeeze it. "It's okay. It was just a glass of wine." It wiggles in his until their fingers are interlocked, like the other night, only it's the new hand. From _him_, and for a moment he wonders if it really is part of him or not.

"Sorry, love. I don't know what got into me."

"Trust me, you're not the only one who'd like to punch that guy's lights out," she says. Her tone sounds light, but her hand hasn't released his. "Guy broke into the ice cream shop yesterday like he was cooperating with Dav—Dad and me, and then, like an idiot, I didn't think he'd run off."

He doesn't say anything, just tries to blink his way back into the moment. Her other arm reaches around and strokes the top of his hand.

"He's not worth it, letting him get into your head."

"I'm sorry." He doesn't know what else to say. He knows she doesn't mean the man that is indeed worming his way into his head...

"Come on, don't be sorry," she says with a gentle laugh and stands back up for a second. "See? Not even a stain. Waiter's okay, bread's still fresh." She picks up one of the spilled slices from the table. "Might as well act like it never happened."

She's right. Swallowing, he takes his napkin after they break apart and wipes drops of wine off his menu and then off his trousers. He spies a dark spot over the square bulge from his pocket and sets it on the table. If some thief ruined his phone with Emma and Henry's numbers in it...

"Can I show you something on that?" she asks after a beat, her eyes still too intent on him to be relaxed. With a hesitant smile, she scrapes her chair along the floor until she's scooted beside him. It all feels like it's moving slower than it is—the way her shoulder brushes his as she picks up his phone. It takes only the push of a few buttons before she holds it out in front of her and leans into him.

"Smile," she murmurs, the side of her head next to his.

Unsure of what to expect, he hears the slightest clicking sound from the phone. It's them. Them. Their likenesses frozen onto the screen. Together. He blinks at it as she pushes one selection after another. The portrait vanishes from view, but he has a feeling it's not completely gone.

"Here." She hands it back to him, the screen with her name and number on it pulled up. "Now when you get a call from me or the other way around, that's the picture that'll pop up."

Holding the phone in his hand and then switching it over to the other one, he feels the corners of his mouth tug a smile forward. Them. Watching her from the corner of his eye, he hits the green button to call her and, sure enough, the picture appears.

"Thank you."

But Emma's backing her chair out from the table, her ponytail swishing from side to side as she scans the floor around her.

"Where's my rose?"

"That thief didn't soil it when he collided into everything, did he?" He wouldn't put it past him, sleepy-eyed little twerp. It's really not that daunting a task to go get another one, he reminds himself as his fists clench. His temper shouldn't be flaring up at the mental image of the man, but it does. He drags his fingertips across the tablecloth, tracing the edge of a red and black-checked column to let it sink in—_he _tells his hands what to do, not the other way around. Granted, he's no expert on the particular triggers and nerves in a brain, but somewhere in his had the notion to move his fingers, so they move. He lifts them one at the time, drumming the table, just as he told them to do.

"You said he took off from the ice cream shop?" he blurts out.

"Yeah, he...I thought we weren't going to talk shop," she says, a touch flirtatiously, he notes, and his eyebrow instinctively lifts up. Mirroring the minuscule tilting of her head, he leans back in his chair, allowing himself a sigh when she spots her flower and sweeps it up off the floor.

They slip into conversation easier than choosing their entrees, twice asking the waiter to give them a few more minutes, Swan laughing about the newest expression her infant brother's made, how she and her father have taken advantage of Snow's new-mother fussiness via a sort of contest as to who can rile her up first.

Food finally finds its way to them, Swan picking and prodding at hers with her fork, looking extra inquisitive.

"Burned? We can send it back."

"No, just wanted to take a look at it. I've..." She rolls her eyes at herself. "I've never ordered...what was it...Shrimp Carbonara before. Thought I'd even the playing field since you hadn't had any of this stuff before, either, so..."

* * *

><p>Some things cross realms, the appropriate amount for a tip one of them. He'd wondered if they would see the thief after they'd gone outside, but, alas, if there is anything a thief knows how to do, it's hide from the law. Swan slows her pace on the walk back to her car, drooping her head down to look at her rose again, her fingers curling over the top to play with the petals. Watching her, he frowns at her almost inaudible sigh of disappointment once the rounded yellow roof comes into sight. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he juts out an elbow and twists his torso until it's facing her.<p>

"Care to go on a walk?" he asks, suddenly aware his heel is bouncing.

"Sure," she says, relieved and, rather coyly, taking his arm.

This side of town isn't as familiar to him as other parts and they soon find themselves walking down a wide, quiet street with only houses and parked cars to meet them. A few streetlights and smaller porch lights give off a soft white, almost blue lighting to everything. Darker than the main street, assuredly, but it still doesn't feel as private as out in open sea, no lights for miles except for an endless array of stars.

"Ships must get lost all the time here," he wonders out loud, as they are well past the point of either's musings appearing foolish. "Can't even see the sky when we're in a residential district."

"That's not true. There's supposed to be a North Star, right? Brightest star we can see?" She throws her chin up into the air, peering into the opaque blackness above them. Squinting, she blinks a few times.

"No luck then?" he teases, watching her place her hands on her hips and straighten her back to be able to search farther.

"Well, you can't _rush _me, but it's like the one thing I retained from eighth grade astronomy..."

"And I'm sure if this world wasn't so fond of artificial light, you'd be able to find it just fine, love, but..." he trails off, seeing she's spinning in a slow circle, her gaze shifted to the street surrounding them. With a devilish smirk that regrettably doesn't come out to play nearly often enough, she closes her eyes and holds out her hand, flexing her fingers apart. As they spread, the streetlights closest to them go out, then the next set, and then the next and the next.

"Just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to start a traffic collision first," she pants, the magic emitting from her leaving her a bit winded. Undeterred, she continues her search...and he finds it right away. "That it?"

"Aye. Well done." Well done, indeed, as no one's even come out of their house in complete puzzlement as to what's happened to the outdoor lights. Well, the two of them can't just stand around in the dark and leave it at that. "Do you remember them telling you in 'eighth grade' it's the tail of the little bear?"

"The what?" she asks, blushing at his sudden grin as he sweeps up behind her and, with both hands, tilts her chin gently back up to the sky until her temple is touching his, until where she looks is where he looks.

"There's the North Star, and you follow that trail of stars down and see how it leads to a boxy shape? That's the little bear, and that star directly below that..." Their heads both dip down. "That's almost the tip of the tail of Draco, the dragon."

"These things really shouldn't have the same names in both worlds," she comments, skimming what he assumes is the tail judging by the way the side of her face brushes his...and leans into it. "Show me another one," she says after a beat.

"Well, below the tail is the big bear, not all that interesting a one," he says, nodding down at it like an old acquaintance one didn't really want to see. "So if you continue up the tail, see how it curves? It curves away from Cepheus, the whale..." He makes sure she sees the elongated pentagon someone decided some ancient time ago was a whale. "Then go back to the dragon's tail till it ends at the head. Just above that," he says, finding her smile all too contagious. "Is Cygnus, the swan." Taking her hand, he holds up their arms and traces the crossed lines in the sky, sweeping over the imaginary wings.

It's, on the surface, nothing more than a peck on his cheek, but Killian closes his eyes, has to catch his breath. It's what he's wanted for so long now, for the two of them to take their time together, to have some fun and just enjoy...and he's about to tell her he loves her. Not yet, not yet, not yet—just enjoy.

Swan seems to share the sentiment, backing away from him but keeping her hand on his arm as her other repeats the motion it did earlier, her spreading fingers bringing the light back into the neighborhood.

"What's it like to have magic?" She gives him a surprised look. "I didn't mean to pry."

"No, no, it's not prying. It's more that it's hard to describe. I used to get so sick of all the fantasy movies showing someone learning magic and the teacher that knows it all already just stands there going, 'Concentrate,' but you really have to! It's, it's...well, it's emotional because you really have to think about _why _you want something to happen. It's not enough to just want to do it. You have to put all your thoughts into what it means. And as if that wasn't hard enough, you have to visualize what you're doing at the same time. You have to picture things more vividly than you ever have before in your _life, _so you're putting your whole brain, no, your whole freaking _soul _into not only the present, but also in the future and they have to synch up and if you're in a battle or some stupid witch from another land is about to rip your mom's heart out, you've got to do it on the spot..." She pauses to take a breath and her blushing brings to light glowing goosebumps below her collarbone. He shrugs out of his jacket and wraps it over her.

"It sounds like it could be overwhelming," he says, offering his arm again for them to walk back to the car.

"Not as much as my rant," she says, rolling her eyes at herself.

"But you're glad you have it."

"It comes in handy, anyway. If I didn't, I would have lost my mom to Cora, Henry to Zelena...you to some Shadow." Sighing, she tucks a loose strand of her hair back into her ponytail and shoots him a smile. "It's not when I plan on using it that's nerve-wracking, though. It's when I do something I didn't plan on. That's probably hard to understand."

"I'm trying to," he says, hoping she doesn't take it as something impossible to understand. He tries not to be taken aback when she shrugs.

"Well, if anyone would get it, it would be you." He watches her, waiting for her to elaborate as she bends over and retrieves her car key from her shoe. He swears his eyebrow is approaching his hairline, but he waits until she gives him her own puzzled look.

"I think you have innate magic confused with charisma."

"Not magic," Swan says, rolling her eyes at him. "But all those years being something you weren't, just now getting used to being someone people depend on and that they're okay with it...you get that." Her head snaps back up after unlocking her door. "Right?"

He hopes so, he thinks, glancing down at his hands.

* * *

><p>The silence would be a comfortable one, save for the fact it brings his mind back to the incident with the thief. Over three hundred years of existing...he knows now not to call it "living"...has taught him patience, if nothing else. It had all happened too quickly for him to think, and before he'd known it, he'd been boiling with rage.<p>

Rumpelstiltskin has not changed and therefore would not bother to warn you if it was cursed.

Of course, that would mean he had cursed it himself.

Or he knows you well enough to drive you mad with just wondering if it's cursed...which is a hint that maybe you should stop worrying, he tells himself with a voice that sounds suspiciously like Swan's.

He just can't.

"Hey. Tiger. You have to come up, can't spend the night in my car."

Shaken yet again from his contemplating, he throws himself out of the seat and rushes around the front of the car to open the door for her again. Still adorned with his jacket, she shoots him a crooked smirk and starts for the apartment without him, nigh-gliding, swaying, in such a manner that would demand he follow whether she said so with words or not. In fact, she doesn't say anything at all until they are inside and up to the square, not-private-enough space just outside her door.

"Well, not bad. You actually managed to make me forget that Storybrooke was under siege from an evil Snow Queen," she says, cocking her head and waiting.

"I was worried that our run-in with that thief might have cast a pall. I apologize for overreacting."

Her chest heaves as she rakes her hand down his arm until her fingers slide through his, the softest intake of air from her the only thing registering with him.

"Hey, it's okay," she murmurs, a bemused look coming over her. "You want to come in and have coffee with...my parents, a newborn, and a human ice maker?"

He can snap out of this funk if she laughs just a little more, her face flushed and eyes bright. And their hands are joined still.

"I really need to get my own place," she adds under her breath.

"I suppose we'll just have to wait until next time," he says, smiling and feeling a bubble of nervous laughter filling up this throat. Gods, he almost salivates at what could await him the next time, if she indeed found a place of her own.

"Next time? I don't remember asking," she teases.

"That's because it's my turn." His breath hitches, a sensory overload threatening to reduce him to nothing more than a randy, eye-popping lad. "Will you go out with me again?"

He remembers that look. He didn't know what it meant the first time he'd seen it, in Neverland when she was drinking him in with her eyes right before she tugged him to her and changed everything with just a touch of her wonderfully intoxicating lips. He knows what it means now and leans into her at the same time she leans into him. It's a more unhurried kiss than that time, but just as ferocious in its own way, robbing him of breath and yet filling him up. He can adore her now properly, wrapping his arms around her so his hands can press into her back.

So close, so close he can only pull her closer. Taking his time, his left hand strokes against the leather on her back up to the back of her neck, lost in the baby curls too short to stay up in her ponytail. He welcomes the loss of control he feels, only needing to break from her long enough to draw in more air.

The hand is roaming more than it should. The control he had just been so willing to shove to the side now sinks its claws into him. Thieves didn't deserve the abrupt, unexplained loss of temper before; therefore Swan certainly doesn't. Opening his eyes, he looks past her blissful face at the palm that he regards with as much familiarity as passing a stranger on the street. Turning around, she slips out of his jacket and, as much as she might have pointed out continuing their time together tonight is impossible, it's a rather come-hither smile she's giving him.

"Goodnight," she says. He responds, watching silently as she faces him only to close the door behind her. She's holding her breath.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Pure fluff is not something I'm used to writing, but we all know the mood whiplash is going to kick in big time after this, and this date is a big deal for them, so I tried to do it justice. My only regret is that I didn't get to write what was happening in the apartment right before, because Snow's little "here we go" cracks me up. The chapter title is from the Christina Perri song, "The Words." Coming up? I wasn't kidding around when I said the fun stops (for now).**


	10. Drowning All Over Again

He feels like himself, or at least he's fairly certain he does. Although if a particular hand in fact _is _influencing him in any regard, he wouldn't necessarily feel any changes, would he? Or wouldn't he? Widening his stride, Killian hustles to Granny's with more fervor than the destination would normally allow. If he can just fall into bed, being sure to lock the door behind him...or better yet, ask Ruby to hold onto his keys for the night and lock him in...he could figure this out properly.

Turning the corner, he spies a figure crouched in front of the library door that is distinctly _not _Belle stooping down in search of a lost key. Angling his head, he shakes it. One would think the mere happenstance of running into the sheriff not too long ago would have quelled whatever compulsion the thief suffered from—picking the lock to the library of all places the latest piece of evidence it's a compulsion...

Well, opportunity knocks, he tells himself, crossing over to him. The man he used to be wouldn't have given a whit about how some foolhardy delinquent spends his nights, but breaking in is breaking in.

"Bloody hell," he mutters to himself, close enough now to spot the empty glass bottle in the thief's wavering hands.

"That's what I say." It takes a beat for him to rise up and look at his new conversation partner. "You."

Small world, Storybrooke, he thinks with a tight smile.

"I've been a pirate long enough to know there's nothing worth stealing in there," he says to him. Ah. Proof that this hand didn't trump his own will in any way. Talking a brash and, judging by the odor, inebriated thief out of anything invites more trouble than turning a blind eye and heading back to one's room.

"That's what you think," the thief argues, snapping back down to continue his work, if one could call it that. Killian rolls his eyes. Escorting a staggering drunk home isn't quite how he'd pictured the night ending, but be that as it may...

"You're drunk, mate. Go home." Reaching for his arm, he expects to be rebuffed, expects that defensive "get off me" that usually follows, and that only frustrates him more as he tries to pull him from the lock with a little more force. It's the second time the thief's elbow tries to jerk him away that dislodges him from reality, sends him spiraling to a more primal time when throwing a punch meant keeping your wages, when hitting back with excess flavored your reputation. And then the spiraling forces him downward even faster as all the meager details of his life weave themselves together into a long tapestry of frustration.

Before he knows it, he's dealt the thief a blow hard enough to slam him to the ground.

"What the hell, mate?" the thief snorts out from behind a ribbon of blood dripping from his nose.

Killian stops and blinks away memories of charging a downed opponent and knocking him senseless with the hilt of his sword. He's on a street, in Storybrooke, where no one had been threatening him. No one had accosted him. Looking from his hand to the deserted street, his eyes veer down to the thief's bloodshot eyes. Gods, had he really been ready to flay some stranger just for making an ass of himself? Calm down, he orders himself.

"You tell anyone about this, you're a dead man," he snarls at him, backing away until he teeters back into one of the library's windows. The punch had taken some of the skin off his knuckles, leaving a raw, crimson wound.

"Bloody crocodile was right," he almost gasps to himself. It had reduced him to Hook with minimal effort, and so covertly he hadn't noticed until he'd nearly... No, no he'd worked too hard on breaking himself of the things he'd fallen prey to before, the instant gratification, the selfishness, the ability to tune out that nagging voice that always made him doubt himself when he'd done a terrible thing.

Mr. Gold's Pawn Shop sign almost resembles a beacon in the dark, an inverted lighthouse that can only steer a ship toward trouble and then back out. As quickly as he hones in on it, the light goes out and there is a faint jingling of bells. The Dark One emerges and locks the door, a small bouquet of flowers in his hand.

The Dark One won't let him break their deal without punishment, he thinks, sprinting toward the sign. In fact, he knows whatever he'll end up doing to pay for it will have been what the crocodile wanted all along. The first deal had only been a trick and the smarmy reptilian imp had even told him so. He throws himself into the car right outside the shop just as Rumpelstiltskin slides into his seat.

"You were right."

"Get out!" Rumpelstiltskin growls at him.

"I don't want this infernal hand anymore. It's taken possession of me."

"You should have heeded my warning when I offered it," he argues. Oh, how he could kill him right now. Could he really blame anyone anymore for being just a tad dubious about what all he has to say? Warnings or not?

"I can't control it! Remove the damned thing before it makes me do something you'll regret!" He doesn't know what. He only knows that whatever rage he might have harbored toward the thief, just or unjust, feels like a mischievous detour compared to how he feels now in this enclosed space, right next to the monster responsible for it all. No deal. There can be no deal. He'll tell Belle. Hell, he'll tell everyone, shout it out from the clocktower if he must.

"Is that a threat?"

"Aye, mate. Take it back, or Belle learns that the dagger she has is as fake as your new disposition," he says, the scheming producing a calming effect on him, enabling him to think.

"Oh, is it?" Rumpelstiltskin counters, his cool tone hairs off from being chilling.

"Is it what?"

"Fake."

No, no, it _has _to be fake. He knows what it is to be sure about something, and that had been a sure thing.

"Well you wouldn't have given me the hand if it weren't," he tries.

"After you extracted that price, I switched the real dagger back," the crocodile explains. It doesn't matter how or when or if that's even true. All that matters is that he's been outwitted. Any scenario he can imagine in which he somehow tips off Belle about the nature of the dagger is now thwarted, for the Dark One's already taken all of them into account. He won't be telling her anything of the dagger.

"No, you're lying," he finds himself saying at the same time his mind tries to shut off the little voice clinging to the idea of informing Belle.

"Am I? Seems you've lost the leverage you once had. So if you want to part ways with that hand and get this back..." He flings his hand out from his body and grasps the hook. "There's only one way I'll help."

Cornered into fighting for the bloody thing, he thinks, his shoulders slumping. Breathing out a curse and then rolling his tongue around at his lips, he closes his eyes. "What do you want?"

"All in good time," he says so dismissively it creates a lump in his throat. He may have erred, but he won't a second time. He'd reviewed the terms of so many contracts between the Dark One and desperate, sometimes greedy, souls throughout the centuries they could have all been scrolled together and looped around the oceans. Just like all those times, the Dark One isn't the only solution. Emma...he banishes that thought. He won't burden her in the middle of another crisis, and even if he did, she's not practiced enough to know what kind of magic or how much a situation warrants. Regina. Regina could restore things, with some gloating, but she's a thousand times easier to appease than her old mentor.

"And you think I'm daft enough to agree to that without knowing the terms? I'll find another way to rid myself of this damned hand."

"I'm afraid that's easier said than done," he says, flicking the hook around in his hand. "You see, my magic put that hand on, and only my magic can take it off."

So smug. Always reveling in how weak he could make other people appear, and toying with that hook as if it were a trophy... He knows it won't kill him, the first thing he'd learned about him, but the rage is consuming him. Reaching over, he jams the tip of hook right into the crocodile's worthless chest. He bleats, bleats like a bloody sheep for only a moment and, after a few ragged breaths, returns to his natural state, smirking down at the hook.

They're both staring at the hook. Instant gratification—you cursed wretch, he scolds himself. Stupid enough to fall for his tricks and now falling back into those old ways...

"You'd think you've have learned the first time you buried that hook in me—it never sticks." He waves it away, but the air in the car feels so stifling hot. How easy it would have been had he been any other person. Any other person in the whole town could have suffered Killian's anger, that selfish need to get what he wants without regard for anyone else, worlds removed from the man he's wanted to be growing up.

"That wasn't me," he blurts in a small voice.

"You're losing control, dearie," Rumpelstiltskin chides. "Next time, you might do something to someone who can't be so easily fixed."

He can't risk that. He can't risk that for anything in the world.

"You have a deal. I'll do whatever it takes," he sighs, voice cracking.

"Oh, I do love it when they say that," the Dark One sings, squirming in his seat. So satisfied. They might as well have come to this point from the beginning. Avoiding it all seems so futile, and yet so inevitable. Older than most and you learn slower than most, he tells himself. How many horrible choices is it going to take?

"Meet me at the docks tomorrow morning, Captain. We have work to do."

* * *

><p>"Good morning, Captain."<p>

The cold greeting shakes him out of a sleep he didn't know he was in. Wincing at the smell of seagulls, the crick in his back from sleeping on a bench, and all the memories of last night that led him here, his hand flies up to his temple, as if he can massage his eyes back into a state of alertness.

He didn't retire to his room last night. The notion of anyone running into him and setting him off had proven too great. Instead, he'd ambled around town, toyed with the idea of drinking himself unconscious, finally deciding to sit and watch the dark waves crash against the hulls of the boats.

"Well I trust you're ready," Rumpelstiltskin continues. Sitting up, Killian squints, his fitful, yet dreamless night making the sun seem bright by comparison.

"I'm ready to pay the price and get this over with," he mutters.

"Good." Rumpelstiltskin, still and straight as a pole, whips out his arm and opens his hand. Faster than his mind can process, he sees a broom fly out of nowhere into the Dark One's grip. Gods, the fact that it isn't some doomsday potion should come as a relief, but he knows this particular broom could be meant for anything _but _cleaning.

"What are we going to do with that?" he grunts.

"This is going to help me find an old friend," he says, setting the broom on the ground. Gliding along the pier, it sprouts twiggy arms, the bristles parting like short thick legs. "After you."

He has the feeling this will either take all day or a few brief, horrifying seconds. Reaching around for his jacket, he throws it on and follows the broom, refusing to throw a backward glance at the crocodile. He's there, he tells himself. He wouldn't miss the chance to be there.

His spine tingles, the instinct to brace himself at Rumpelstiltskin's footfalls waking him up more than the morning's rude awakening. Rumpelstiltskin catches up until they walk side by side past the paralleled gray streets of downtown and drift toward the outskirts.

"And where have you told your lovely wife you are this morning?" he inquires.

"Out collecting the rent, and with the amount of time I've squandered thanks to this man, he does indeed owe me a considerable amount of debt."

Half-truths and entitlements, he thinks. Sounds about right. The sun softens as it hits more trees and reflects off the tops of the cars along the street. It's a more run-down part of Storybrooke, but still unassuming, still cloaked in the mundane design of the town. For a moment, he wonders if it's all connected to Elsa. A man, Rumpelstiltskin had said, so not Anna, but had there been anything else going on that would have forced the Dark One into action?

"To whom is our bristled guide leading us?" he asks. He bites his tongue. It's not as if learning a name will shine any light on what this is all about.

"Someone who wronged me long ago, and today he's going to pay the price." The broom marches up the steps of a porch and sets itself next to the door, its animation drained from its body. Without as much as a sneer in his direction, the crocodile knocks on the door.

A scraggly old man answers with casual, unexpected movements, and then halts. The ends of his unbuttoned shirt furls with that split-second realization of horror Killian is sure has greeted the Dark One more than once.

"Hello, old friend," the Dark One hisses. "Captain, please see our host to a seat."

Inhaling, he glances over at Rumpelstiltskin before gripping the man by the shoulders. He doesn't struggle too much. Through the sleeves, he feels the man's arms go rigid, the muscles so tight they spasm. Well, he won't exert more force than he needs to. Whatever the man's done, it's a far worse fate Rumpelstiltskin has in store for him than being slammed down into a chair. He shuffles to the back of the chair and holds the man down on it, his rigidness feeling more and more like steeling himself for the inevitable.

After the minimal amount of scuffling, Rumpelstiltskin takes his time entering the living room, a round box of sorts in his hand. He kneels and places it on the floor in front of them, each step deliberate and showy, meant for the man to see.

The front two legs of the chair jerk up, the item enough to jostle some fight into the man. Behind him, he can't see past the gray frizz, but he can _feel _the terror sweeping over him, the pulse quickening, the involuntary spurt of his shoulders as the Dark One presents the dagger. Waving it over the box, it almost unfolds...a milky collection of yellow stars in a violet mist swirling up and up until it all molds itself into the shape of a pointed hat.

"You have it?" the old man croaks out. Have what? What is it, he pleads with himself not to ask.

"Don't tell me you doubted me."

"Every Dark One _tries_," the old man states with staunch authority. "Every one fails."

"Might be time to update the motto," Rumpelstiltskin quips.

"You may have the hat, but we both know you will never collect enough power to do what you want," he says with such a calm it incites Killian to loosen his grip. May everyone be so brave in the face of the Dark One's wickedness, he thinks, finding his breaths growing shallower.

"Oh, I will, but, alas, you won't be there to see it." Setting the dagger down, he pinches the top of the hat, applying as little pressure as possible, and flips it onto its side. The opening is a blinding golden light...with a deep sucking sound growing louder and louder until he feels the air whizzing by him toward the hat. Letting go of the chair, he realizes as strong as the sudden rush of wind may be, he doesn't feel it. It should be blowing his hair forward, pressing his jacket into his back. Only the old man seems to react, convulsing in the chair. There's no need to hold him down. Low guttural moans escape from him as his arms and knees get pulled closer to the hat. The more it pulls, the more he fades from view. Killian had seen traveling by magic so many times before, but it had always been faster than a snap of the fingers, a mere blink and one could miss the vanishing altogether. This, this slow, to the tortuous whirlpool of magic is something more insidious.

The old man fades from view completely, the slightest yellow vapor drifting in the air with the dust particles for a fraction of a second before disappearing into the hat.

"Where the hell did he go?" he breathes, unable to tear his eyes from the empty chair.

"Exactly where I need him." Rumpelstiltskin answers as if his pulse didn't rise at all. Holding up the hat, he turns it, eyeing it here and there with a smirk. Setting it down with the opening into the floor, he retrieves the dagger and waves it over it in the opposite direction. Sealed up once again in its box, there is no hint whatsoever it contains a human being, maybe more. "Well...shall we?" he gestures at the door.

"Is he dead?"

"Let's not concern ourselves with trifles like that now. Not when there's a bargain to fulfill. The shop?"

"You could just do it here or outside and I can be on my way," he protests. Gods, go back to that shop? Be forced to watch him perform some ritual that requires the old man's corpse? Watch him grind the bones or magic out of him until it serves some selfish whim? An abrupt sound from his phone in his pocket even takes a moment to register.

"Don't answer that. We're not finished yet, are we?" the Dark One snaps. With a crooked smile, he clutches the box to his chest and folds his arms. "I am surprised you want to linger, however. The little curtains on the door aren't exactly my taste."

He snaps his fingers and, as he had thought earlier, the house disappears and they are back in the shop.

Waiting, Killian does nothing more than watches him cross over to behind the counter, his fingers running over the lid of the jar that had contained his hand.

"Okay. We're done. I've fulfilled our deal. Now take it off," he demands, holding up his hand. Stoically, the Dark One stares at him, with an expression that would have been unreadable save for the corner of his mouth fighting to stay put and not curl up. Finally he feels the weight of the harness...and the hook...back on his wrist after Rumpelstiltskin's waved his hand.

"Our deal actually isn't complete," he says.

"I say it is. You can no longer control me, mate. I just saw you use the real dagger, so I know you're lying to Belle." He'll tell her anyway for the sheer avenging of the old man at the house. Who he was or what he did doesn't matter; all that matters is that he opposed the Dark One. There's something delicious about it, the knowledge he won't win this time, no matter how confident the coward may appear. Smiling, he adds, "You've got nothing on me."

Rumpelstiltskin holds up one finger, face unchanging. Reaching to the side with no extra movements or flourishes, he picks up the black rectangular...what are those called...he's seen them at the station a few times, and underneath the talking box in Granny's sitting room... They show things that have happened; that much, he knows.

"Security tape, from the house we just left," Rumpelstiltskin whispers to him, in an almost conspiratorial tone. Killian takes a step back. No, no they are not collaborators on what just happened there. They are in no way partners. "How do you think Miss Swan is going to react when she finds out what you did to that kindly old man?"

"I know how that device works, and if I'm on there, so are you." He must have conjured it up as they were leaving. He won't dare show it to anyone. Cowardice and common sense alone dictate one doesn't incriminate one's self. Rumpelstiltskin passes his hand over it.

"And now I'm not," he chuckles softly. "But you are."

_But all those years being something you weren't, just now getting used to being someone people depend on and that they're okay with it...you get that. _Give her some faith, he tells himself, swallowing. It's not like she can be in the same room with this world's Mr. Gold and not suspect him of deceit.

"I only did what you asked so I could rid myself of that cursed hand, so I could become a better man. Emma will understand that."

_You and I, we understand each other._

"Even when she finds out the truth?" he asks.

"What truth?"

"This hand," he begins, pointing at the jar's grotesque contents. "Isn't cursed."

His blood runs cold before he can even inhale. The entire night after the thief...the flaring temper, the feeling that something wasn't right...

"N-no, you said-"

"You were right!" he scoffs, holding his hand out to silence him. "Dark One lies, Dark One tricks. This hand is nothing but a lump of flesh. The only thing it did was give you permission—permission to be the man you _really _are, not some puppy dog chasing after the object of his affection, but a ruthless pirate who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. I did you a favor," he growls at him. "I helped you remember the darkness that lies beneath."

He hasn't changed. He's made a mockery of change, of redemption, playing a part and convincing himself that's all it takes to change... Everything he ever did that he'd hoped to never think about again rushes back at him as if it was all on the broad side of a blade flying toward his face. His throat burns at the idea of it, the uncertainty of whether or not it's true worse than even accepting it. Sw—Emma may love him, may, but what's he done to deserve it? A few deeds here and there resembling bravado more than whatever a hero is supposed to embody. When it all comes down to it, he's just another person in her life that lets her down, only in a different way.

His eyes drift back up to the amused brown orbs drinking him in. It's what he hated most about this world, about this curse. After all he's done, fate rewards the crocodile with comfort, with chance after chance, with _love. _

"Then you know that that darkness will have no problem crushing Belle's heart." The pity he might have felt for her before grows cold. She'd allowed herself to become an ignorant little simpleton, someone who just chose a weak, cowardly man to love so she could be the one to save him. The best part is he won't even have to lie to her to show her what she's become. The vows the two of them might have made to each other, the rings on their fingers—they might as well have been two small children pretending to be husband and wife.

"If you go after my love, you will surely lose yours. You threatened my marriage, tried to destroy the only light in my life, and for that, you will owe me as long as you live."

So he can sink deeper. So he can fall back into the villain pit and feel that gnawing emptiness all over again...he'd rather die.

"What if I'm willing to take you down with me?"

"I think I know you better than you know yourself, dearie," he says, smiling. Taking his time stepping out from the counter, he approaches him as if they were old friends. "So here we are, Captain, still in business together. I think you and I are going to have some fun."

He refuses to think about what errand he might be sent on next, much less if he'll do it or not. The shame...no, it's more than shame. Guilt. True, concentrated guilt bears down on him, an anchor plunging itself and him into the dark depths. Finding his honor, trying to change, had been the only way to the surface, and he'd thought he was there. Fool, he scolds himself. Drowning men never know which way is up.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Coming up? Hook discovers another book of our world in an unlikely place.**


	11. Storming the House

The text from Swan just sets the foundation for a wall of questions. _Must be a blue moon. Jail occupied. _He takes that to mean she arrested someone, but that that someone isn't the Snow Queen. He glances back down at his hook, where he'd had a hand just minutes ago. It had served so many purposes over the centuries, but none so wretched as that of a mark of shame, and not even due to all the distasteful things he'd done with it. A mark of stupidity, misplaced pride, grossly underestimating someone he knew all too well...

Lost in thought, his hand finds the stem of the hook and twists it, presses his thumb into the cold metal. Not that he would ever lie to Swan...her superpower shutting down even the temptation to do so...but he ponders the fact that there isn't even a valid excuse he can give for why he's latched to this bloody thing again. Up the steps and down the long hallway with the salt-and-pepper flooring to the sheriff's station, he enfolds it into the hem of his shirt and gives it a makeshift polishing.

"Where were you?"

"Sorry, love, I just got your message..." He had barely registered walking into the station, let alone the self-righteous thief from last night staring him in the face. It would be the cruelest form of irony if all that had been orchestrated by the Dark One as well.

"It's okay. I just need another minute here." She turns back to the thief. "You were about to tell me who did that to your face."

Not opposed to the pregnant pause..._at all_, the thief's enormous eyes stare at him with a cold detachment.

"It's a bloody mystery to me. Your guess is as good as mine. Must have been some party, eh?" he recites, only his eyes second-guessing the intelligence of lying. But all three of them know she doesn't have to believe he's telling the truth. The truth, not just about that damned punch that truly hadn't been worth it, hadn't been worth anything, only needed to be concealed. As long as she doesn't dig much deeper, the thief has her at a stalemate. Her scoffing sniff acknowledges it.

"Well, if you remember anything, I'll know where to find you," she counters.

"You're just going to keep me in here because I broke into a bloody library?"

"Because you crashed my date," she snaps back in the same tone. She finally turns to him with that coy smile and languidly takes hold of the sleeve of his jacket. "Which turned out pretty good despite the rude interruption...what the hell happened to your hand?"

Don't lie, he warns himself, and he _won't_, but now's not the time to be a burden to her. The Snow Queen's on the loose, Anna's still missing, and this thief seems hell-bent on tormenting Sheriff Swan every chance he gets. His own stupid actions acting as nothing but a plank for him to plummet from can't take a priority.

"It appears the Dark One's magic wasn't all I'd hoped it would be," he settles on, watching her scrape her finger down to the tip of the hook.

"Emma. There's something I need to talk to you about," David calls to her from one of the desks. She gives his hook a casual stroke, no different than scratching a dog's ear, and meanders over to her father.

"Well make it fast. I want to go after the Snow Queen before the trail gets...cold." She winces at the unintended pun.

"The name the Snow Queen's been using in Storybrooke? Sarah Fisher? That name doesn't appear anywhere in the census records."

"What does that mean?"

"You're right. She didn't come here by any curse."

"Then how did she get here? What the hell does she want with me?" she wonders out loud, her eyes darting to him, then her father, and back to him again. Stumped. He needs to push everything that happened this morning out of his mind. She's at a bloody standstill and he's been preoccupied with his hook of all things.

"We won't uncover any of those secrets here," he says. "If the records of the curse don't shed any light on who she is, perhaps we ought to venture out. Her identity appears to be the keystone to all this."

Swan crosses past him and unlocks one of the drawers in the second desk and whips out the phonebook, flipping through the pages with a more practiced dexterity than he has.

"Not in here," she groans. "Okay. She wants to do things the hard way."

Elsa stands and moves over next to Swan, peering down at the phonebook and watching her turn page after page.

"The only listing is for the ice cream shop," Elsa says, her braid falling off her shoulder as she watches Swan sift through stiff tan envelopes, the tops opened and labeled.

"Only listing, but probably not the only mentioning of her..." she trails off, pulling out one of the envelopes.

"What's that?" he asks, curiosity distracting him for the time being. He goes over to the envelopes and reads the labels in faded pencil.

"Case files Graham kept during the curse. He had to have a job, but nothing all that serious ever happened. And, as it turns out, Leroy was as much of a big-mouth as he is now. Here," she says after a pause, pulling a piece of paper out of the file. "Grievance filed against Happy...figures...right outside the ice cream shop."

"The Snow Queen was a witness," David concludes, his eyes widening.

"Yep. Made a statement and everything in...2004." Pointing to a boxed-in section on the paper, she smiles. "That's the address she had then, and since that kind of stuff doesn't change much around here, that's where we should start."

"I'd like to search her shop, if you don't mind," Elsa speaks up. "David had said it ran off of her magic rather than anything this world has. Even though she's shut it all down, maybe there's something there I can sense or detect. After all, she and I are-"

"Don't say 'the same,'" Swan interrupts her, her gaze intent.

"I was going to say 'similar.' Besides, you're the one with the more investigative background. Maybe you should search the house."

"Sounds like a plan," Swan agrees. "David, you were there before. Can you stay with Elsa while I take the house?"

"What about our jailbird?" he asks, cocking his head in the direction of the cell.

"I can hear you!" the thief retorts.

"He's not going anywhere." She pats her father's arm as he cradles the back of her head and kisses it as he always does before escorting Elsa out. "Killian, ready to see a Snow Queen's house?"

Not saying anything, he smiles at her, hoping they'll find something pertinent enough to keep his mind on the threat at hand.

* * *

><p>White wood with a row of turquoise shutters and trim stares at them from the shaded front porch of a stout little house, made to look even stumpier by the elegant black tree trunks behind it. He remembers creeping up to Zelena's hideout, that one trying so hard to look inconspicuous it almost pleaded for attention. This house lives up to the humble ones on either side of it. Hidden in plain sight. With a toss of her hair, Swan looks over at him, her eyebrows and mouth straight, her train of thought similar.<p>

"She won't be here," she mutters to herself as they walk up the step to the front door. He veers off to the side to inspect the back. It's a little yard with a small square patio, empty. No chairs, no tools or trinkets left out...

"You want the upstairs or the downstairs?" she calls to him, the creaking of the door loud enough for him to hear from the side of the house.

"It's small enough we don't need to separate to cover everything," he says. It takes more of an effort than he would like to clear his mind of last night and this morning.

"I've got to pick Henry up from school soon...and I have a feeling we're not going to find anything."

They stare into the living room, the majority of the downstairs. It winds around to a rather large kitchen, and, other than that and a small door to their left, that's all there is. Nothing adorns the wall on his way up the staircase except for a milder amount of natural light from all the windows. He comes up to a gigantic bedroom, so square he just spins in a singular circle before commencing a search.

He starts with the bedside table's drawer, small and white and with a thin veneer. It matches the white lacy blanket atop the brass bed. Nothing in the drawer, he sinks down and feels around underneath the bed.

Not finding anything could in fact be something, he thinks, crossing over to the white dresser. He raises his eyebrow at the faux-diamond knobs. Garish and overly large, it gives it the appearance of a child's piece of furniture. Not a total stranger to what women can keep in their drawers, he inhales and opens the top drawer to find one, two...six pairs of socks and six drab undergarments next to them. All right, moving on... The lack of clothes gives the illusion of even more depth in the drawers, a scant amount of shirts and trousers made for what he assumes sleeping—short, no lower than the knee, of a thin material.

It's as if the Snow Queen arrived to Storybrooke with only the clothes on her back, he thinks with folded arms. Staring at the dresser, his lips purse together in thought. Closet, he decides, crossing to the mirrored doors in front of the bed. He slides it back and finds a few pastel shirts, some collared, all solid, hanging on a rack. So bare, the long wooden bar looks even longer. No extra boxes. Well, that oddity could have been summed up by the curse taking care of the hardships of moving into a place. But the others who were cursed—they established lives here. Lives built on lies, but still ones planted with such care they still could claim roots. This woman could have just as easily arrived here yesterday.

Heading back downstairs and turning the corner off the front door, passing the bathroom that would have been on the left, he eyes no souvenirs or keepsakes on the shelves or desktops. There aren't any pictures anywhere to provide clues. Swan is still rummaging in the kitchen, skittering her fingers through cards in a small box.

"Recipes," she says with her head reeled back in disgust. "Ones that bring back memories."

He's never known her to grimace at food before, so he crosses over the bare living room and peeks down at the unsavory words "corn dogs" written on the top of a white lined card. His eyes follow her fingers as she drops the card down to the next one, "chili dog."

"Had one too many hot dogs as a kid." With a lump in her throat, she adds, "Cheap, quick, filling—good stuff for people taking on way too many kids." Closing the box, she stares at it for a moment before angling herself back to the living room. "I found something else really weird, too."

He follows her over to some built-in shelves next to the fireplace, only a few books giving the house any personal touch. She pulls one out and holds it by its diamond-patterned spine. Cocking his head, he raises an eyebrow at the boy straddling a broomstick.

"'_Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_,'" he reads.

"I read this series as a kid. All the books here are ones I read as a kid."

Stepping forward, he skims the spines—_The Giver, Howl's Moving Castle, Anne of Green Gables, The Princess Bride_...basic words that feel like a foreign language. Swan read these books, is looking at them right this minute with the affection of old friends, and he should be able to uncover some other facet to her through them. Glancing back down at the bespectacled lad on the book, he flips it over and back again.

"He's a witch?" he tries.

"He's a wizard...it's pretty good." He tucks the book into his arm and savors the look of surprise on her face as she folds her arms. "Taking some homework with you?" Answering her with just a grin, she sighs.

"Well, he's a friendlier looking wizard than what I'm used to. It's all the personal touch this house seems to have."

"Yeah, the curse gave everybody a life. Mary Margaret had photos of her doing things with her students and everything. This is almost, almost like she came here and put her life on hold." Flapping her arms at the books, she gives them a glare. "The only things that give this place any kind of character are things that have more to do with me..." He doesn't respond as she's pulled out her phone and stands frozen staring at it.

"What are you doing?"

"I _was _going to call Regina and ask if this Sarah Fisher had ever acted suspicious. I mean, twenty-eight years, I'm sure Regina got ice cream at least once in that time. But she's not talking to me, so it doesn't matter."

"Perhaps she'll talk to me," he says, placing his phone on the counter and gesturing for her to do the same with hers. Wary, she nevertheless does so, her questioning look priceless.

"Just don't get your hopes up. You don't seem to be one of her favorite people, either," she warns. However, she looms over his phone and hits a button called "speaker" as it rings.

"Hello? Who is this?"

"Regina!" he says, taking a moment to marvel at not having to put the phone up to his ear. "I'm ransacking the Snow Queen's house."

"Oh dear god, Hook, I...am I on speaker?" she demands. Swan opens her mouth, but he holds up his hand.

"So _that's_ what that button does! Well, since I have you, I was hoping you could assist in the investigation." Looking up, he locks eyes with Swan, her smirk on the verge of giggling.

"Hook, I have no desire to speak to Miss Swan whatsoever."

"And Emma's not here, so I fail to see a problem."

"You two are attached at the hip and you're telling me she's not there?" Regina scoffs. His heart starts pounding, but he can't help but try to gauge Swan's reaction. Her face remains stoic, objective, but her cheeks redden and there doesn't seem to be an end to the blushing.

"Come, come, love, the enemy of my enemy and all that. Was the Snow Queen part of your curse or not?"

There is a pause. He waits for the click to indicate she's just chosen to end the conversation. At last, he hears a sigh.

"I didn't know her personally, in our world or this one, but if she wasn't part of the curse, she certainly played the part well."

"And how would you, in your expertise, surmise she did get here?" he asks.

"I don't know. You brought Elsa here in an urn. Maybe you or your meddling girlfriend brought this one here in a UPS package or some Tupperware," she snaps.

And there's the click, he notes.

"That's it then," Swan says. "There's no way this doesn't have something to do with her knowing me. She knew who I was, she's got my books on her shelf, she nearly took me off the road."

"What?"

"She iced the road while I was driving in this morning. They aren't kidding around when they tell you to steer into the skid."

His hand finds her hair and winds a strand around his fingers, brushing the lapel of her jacket.

"You realize, love, the only time neither of us has been in danger lately is when we're on a date?" he breathes, his forehead dipping down and brushing against her hair. She looks up at him and he's near enough to feel the muscles in her face manage a smile.

"Subtle hint we should go on more," she sighs. As she breaks away from him, her eyes lower to his lips before she blinks herself out of it. He won't dwell on how nice a distraction a kiss would have been. "Uh, I've been meaning to ask you...Henry, well, you guys had a nice time together and maybe now...you know, you'd like to take him out again?"

"You have to ask it as though you're unsure?"

"Hey, you look like you could use a break, too," she says. "Down because of your hand?"

He looks like he could use a break? What the bloody hell did that mean? She didn't find him helpful? He'd looked like he'd been stewing over everything but what she needed? Should he agree just for the sake of her behest? Had the hook truly been irking him that incessantly?

"It's just...I think it would be a good idea if you two got to know each other a little better," she says quickly, and perhaps it's his imagination, but the way she looks up at him, her features appear to relax and allow themselves to be read, the storm clouds always circling over her clearing.

"I'd be delighted to, Swan." He does need a distraction, at least until he can figure out what the crocodile will want from him. It suddenly sounds so tranquil, taking Henry out on the water again, the steady rhythm of the waves clearing his mind. "Henry's up for sailing then?"

"There are boats down there to rent, you know," she says, her smirk masking relief. Grabbing her keys, she starts for the door, nudging his arm a little as she passes by him.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I did put a year in this chapter, part of my vision of how the original curse worked. You can PM me if you feel it's too much of a distraction from the story and I can go into more detail. Coming up? Mood whiplash!**


	12. Reflections

The rest of the day consisted of trip after trip to the town archives, lugging everything to the sheriff's station, the only reprieve when Swan had held her phone up to his ear so he could tell Henry personally when he would be picking him up. Spur of the moment this sailing excursion may be, he thinks after swinging by Granny's for a thicker shirt to wear out in the wind, but he needs it, and Swan is up to her hips in paperwork as it is, so it's not as though she'll be doing anything rash tonight...that is, if she doesn't strangle the thief in his cell.

"You know which entrance to pick him up?" she asks for the hundredth time over the phone. Tucking the latest box under his arm, he manages to hold the phone up to his ear with his shoulder.

"South entrance...I'm sure the barrage of exiting children will give it away."

"I already called the school and let them know you'd be picking him up, so if anyone gives you a hard time..."

"I simply have them call you. Relax, love." A soft, shaky sigh answers him. Best change the subject, he decides. After all, if anyone should be nervous about picking the lad up after school, it should be himself or Henry. "I'll drop off this one last box and be on my way."

"Okay. Because school lets out at three-thirty, you know."

He knows. He'd gone with her to the apartment between hauling boxes so she could look up the policy in the school's handbook, a rather gargantuan manuscript, and a quick greeting to her mother and brother, the latter reciprocating Swan's affections by spitting up all down her arm, delaying their return to the station by only a few minutes so she could run up and change. Swan, however, acted as if it had added hours to an already-behind schedule and had bolted back to the station to help Elsa sort through what was already there, leaving him to handle the rest. He hadn't even done it yet and he feels as adept at retrieving Henry from school as though it had always been part of his routine.

"Paperwork ahoy," he announces, holding the box up for Swan and Elsa to see as he enters the station. "Old city records from the mayor's office, per your request."

Relishing the proud smile greeting him, her lips forming a rather enticing pout as she does so, he keeps his eyes on her as he lifts the lid. It comes as no shock the contents harbor a musty odor.

"Oi! Somebody's forgotten about me dinner!" the thief belts out. Musty odor, indeed, he thinks, mirroring Swan's disgruntled face. Bothersome parasite still reeks of the drink and the neglected sheets on the cot in the cell are probably soaking all of it up. "I had the bangers and mash."

"You had the water and Pop-Tart," Swan retorts, grabbing a clear bottle and some tart that in no way looks popped and thrusting them between the bars.

"Somebody's already had a nibble."

"I'd had my shots."

He doesn't hear most of the git's commentary on that, Elsa straining herself to hoist as many files as she could out of the box.

"They're wedged in there pretty tightly," he says, pulling a few back with his fingers to give her some leeway.

"So I can see."

He has to leave now if he's to make it to the school on time, the whole point of this endeavor compromised if either he or Henry are kept waiting for a prolonged period of time. There's a familiar pang in his stomach as he looks over at Swan, still sorting through even more files. Attached at the hip, Regina had said, and he supposes it's probably true, nearly every waking moment spent on this case. To leave her now even for just a few hours leaves a deep hollow pit in his chest. Spoiled, he thinks, remembering so many nights of lying awake feeling nothing but emptiness that she was a whole world away with no memory of him. Unable to suppress this sudden urge of greed, er...he'd rather call it longing, he crosses over to her.

"Well, I'm off to take Henry sailing, love, unless there's something else you want me to do here."

"Make sure Henry wears his life vest, okay?" she murmurs back, tilting her head back so she's inches from him. She ought to look in love more often, he decides, catching himself admiring her.

"Befriending the son to get in with the mum? Yep, no one will ever see through that," the thief snaps. Well, Swan may be able to ignore him as she's had more practice tuning him out, but the crass remark might as well have been shots fired across his prow.

"Why don't you keep your thoughts to yourself, mate?" He turns and grits his teeth at the thief, arms dangling over the bars. That dealt blow at the library might not have been worth it, but one right now just might quench his thirst... No, he doesn't have time for this. He'll let Henry down if he's late and he'll let Swan down even more if he doesn't at least try to stop regressing.

"Goodbye," he says hastily, making sure to kiss her just once, reassuring himself the separation won't last.

* * *

><p>Henry flings his backpack by the wheelhouse and treads with light steps around to the lines.<p>

"Good memory, lad. We'll be out past those shoals in no time," he says, leaving a gold piece on the worn, splintery planks of wood that now led to nothing. Paying for use of a boat, he didn't mind. So long as he could pick which one, and, judging by the shape of the trim and the crumpled bits of paper all around the helm, he'd been more than generous with assessing the cost.

Henry didn't compare as much to New York this time, but Killian wonders if he'd prefer that to the stiff courtesies the boy tried to apply, a throwaway observation on the weather here, a detached concern about the difficulty of finding the school in the first place. Fortunately, he knew Swan had been nervous and Henry distracted or else he might have wondered why everyone suddenly doubted his sense of direction.

"Are we going back out to that island?" he asks him over a strong gale.

"Whatever you want. We can go there or we can circle around. I'll say this for the bloke who owns this boat—at least he keeps it fueled. Bear three points starboard so we'll steer clear of the shallows over there. Henry?"

It had almost worked, the deep blue waves clapping against the slippery brown rocks. The sun and the shadows just beneath the surface of the water meeting each other. The old sensations of the wind daring your face to turn away from it all—it had distracted him only long enough to discover he wasn't the only one in the boat who looked preoccupied.

"Sorry," Henry mutters, still turning the wheel with inexperienced hands, but it's nothing practice can't remedy.

"Just let it float out here a moment, lad. Get your bearings."

"I'm fine."

"No one's saying you're not...but if something were on your mind, you could trust me with it." Sighing, Killian decides to walk toward a coil of rope rather than Henry. He's overplayed his hand, come on too strong. He supposes it's a discussion they should have eventually—he will not keep it to himself the way he did with Bae; a son has the right to hear a grown man tell him he's in love with his mother...and said son has a right to tell the man exactly how he feels about it. Watching Henry from the corner of his eye, he notes some deliberation, the lad's mouth flexing this way and that.

"It's just that, you and my mom..."

He wishes he had rehearsed something.

"When you guys went back in time, you had my book with you."

Killian blinks at him, his eyebrow arching well into his brow. Henry had spoken it so knowingly, like this was some shared understanding they had, but he can think of no reason why such a detail would vex him so... Ah. It wasn't that they had taken the book with them. It was that they had changed it, his totem, his talisman powerful enough to return his memories to him. Curling his lips back, he takes a breath.

"I'm sorry, Henry. When I borrowed your book that day, believe me, time travel was not something I had intended on doing... I swear, I kept it as close to me at all times as I could."

"No, it's not that. I lent it to you and you get sucked into a portal. That...well, around _here_, that happens," he says with a laugh. "No. When you came back, it changed. It was like it had rewritten itself even though the future had stayed pretty much the same."

"That's how I understand it," he agrees.

"Well," he breathes. "You've sailed to a bunch of different places that have magic. Is that a thing? Books that rewrite themselves? No, uh, no magical guild of authors?"

Scratching behind his ear, he shuffles and pretends he's doing so to peer over the rail of the boat.

"In all my travels, Henry, I've never seen anything that even begins to resemble your book. It's a marvel," he says, tempted to ask if he has it on him. He's seen parts of it, but, should they find a spot of land shielded from the wind, they could peruse it at their leisure, provided the sun didn't glare off the white pages and sear the colors of the illustrations into his eyes.

"That's what I thought," Henry heaves.

"Might I ask what's warranted this line of thought?"

"Nothing, nothing. Just thought it was time to really get to the bottom of it since it's a mystery," he lies, shrugging. Well, don't be too hard on him, he corrects himself. He's going to the trouble of answering with truths, just evasive ones. The unnatural way he rubs his nose and the indentation just underneath it confirms it. One does not need a lie-detecting superpower when it comes to a twelve-year-old.

"What say you to exploring around the ice wall and then circle back around for dinner?" he offers, switching places with him at the helm, the two of them silently agreeing to let the subject go for now.

"One time we'll have to rent one that has a crow's nest," Henry calls to him, climbing up onto the rail and craning his neck out toward the shimmery blue prison bars the Snow Queen has in place. His tone's returned to normal, too. "Got any stories about my dad getting tangled up in one?"

"Several," he laughs, wrapping his arms over the spokes of the helm and setting his chin into them like a bird in a nest, watching him. So much like his father.

"Can we get closer to the wall?" he asks with a skittish face, expecting to be turned down.

So much like his father, he thinks again, nodding his head at him. With his mother's expressions.

* * *

><p>Henry managed to keep him from dwelling on his debt to the Dark One with chatter about some "unsolvable" logic puzzle on his phone, placing numbers in a grid in such a way that they never repeated themselves in their respective square, row, or column. Over grilled cheese, they'd set the phone in between them and tried positioning the digits in the correct spots, himself having more success than the boy. It reminded him of when he would pass the hurry-up-and-wait moments the Navy was so fond of dealing out by creating graphs and charts from puzzles with missing information. Mister White's painting of the mountains did not come in last at the contest...Mister Red came in third...the man who painted the ocean came in first...Mr. Green beat the man who painted the desert and the man who painted the flowers beat Mr. Orange.<p>

The numbers had come a little easier to him for the mere reason the grid to work with already existed, and, after a light teasing that one day the lad will find something to best him in, he'd walked him all the way to Regina's house. Not his grandparents' apartment tonight, he had mused with his hand on his belt and his lips tucked into his mouth outside on the walkway after Regina had curtly thanked him and taken Henry inside without looking back.

Swan really needed to get her own place...

Not wanting to even bring her up with Regina, he had decided to stop at the sheriff's station, his hunch being that she was there.

Bathed in sparse light and the only sounds being his footsteps and the faint humming of the food dispensing box in the corridor, he exhales at seeing the sheriff's door propped open with a wedge of wood. He sees her behind the glass partition, leaning over in her chair with her back to him. He raps on the glass with his hook, startling her a fraction of an inch.

"Hello, love," he says, suddenly frowning at the distant melancholy in her face. Her lips try to muster a wistful smile at him as she sits back up and folds her arms.

"You seem vexed...like you could use a drink." He holds his flask out to her and she takes it without much reluctance, but she turns away from him as she removes the cap.

"That's putting it lightly," she groans in a hushed, almost hoarse voice, like she'd been sitting here so long she'd forgotten how to talk. Something had to have happened...not something life-threatening, however. She's not angry, nor on full alert as the Snow Queen has rendered her thus far. He follows her mournful eyes to a small box on the floor at her feet.

"What's that?" he asks.

"What's left of my childhood."

Swallowing, he gazes at the box, so small, probably filled to the brim with memories of something that ended too soon, probably things she hadn't revisited in years... Whatever happened tonight struck some private nerve in her and yet the pirate in him yearns to open it up and drink it all in, like dusting the sand off of a buried treasure.

"May I have the honor?"

For a brief moment, he thinks she's reading him, but she's looking past him, weighing something in her mind other than whether or not she can trust him with it. She picks up the box and sets it on the desk and pulls out an even smaller, veneer-stripped box with scuffed edges. She whips it out in a haste and holds it to her.

"Are you okay?" he asks. It can wait. Really. Some things take years, lifetimes, to be comfortable talking about, and this, this is _showing _him the memories, the pain.

"I think so," she huffs, extending it out to him in one fluid motion. There is still some reserve in her eyes, but she lets go of it when he takes it and places her hand back on the desk, fingertips on the rim.

Holding his breath, he opens it and the first item on top of folded pieces of paper and lopsided woven bracelets elicits a surprised grin on his face. Spectacles. Simplistic thick ones that feel so small in his grip. His grin widens when he looks up at the abashed smile watching him, imagining her with them on. Truth be told, he had empathized with every hint of her past but could never actually visualize it.

Returning them to their place, he sifts through the contents and the slight glint of something shiny beckons to him. He lifts out a ring, robin's egg blue and in need of polishing. It doesn't take someone with experience in handling riches to know it's fake, cheap, even. The story behind it is what's earned it a place among the rest... Little spectacled Swan, just a cygnet, wearing this and hoping someone would say she looked lovely with it...

There's a photograph, her face and Bae's crinkled in happiness, looking in each other's eyes. They'd been happy. For however brief a time, they'd made each other happy, had dared to hope that they'd found a family. No way of knowing fate would toss all of that into the four winds and watch it scatter.

He'd deserved a family. Deserved love. It begins to rush back to him, standing there in the pawn shop unable to speak as David placed his hand on his shoulder and Snow had swept Belle up in her arms and just held her as the tears flowed.

Needing to look away, needing to seek out solace, he catches Emma staring at him, her eyes wide and prepared to rebuild the walls he knows right now are nothing but a trench dug in the ground. She snaps her head away after reading him, quicker now than ever. Sighing, she gathers up a blanket and wraps the corner of it around her hand, like knitted snow it's so pure looking, a bold purple ribbon woven through it with "Emma" on it. She scrunches it in her hands and sets it back into the box. He'd expect some of it to puff out, but it's so tiny, barely long enough to bundle a baby...ah.

Examining an odd-shaped contraption, she pops her head up and looks out past the glass.

"Swan?" He follows her out to where she's bent in front of the television, fiddling with the machine under it. In her hands she holds the black tapes that play events on them, the machine it had been in set aside. The desk provides adequate enough seating, so he props himself up onto it.

"I haven't watched this since I recorded it, but some things happened today that made me think about the past," she says, swaying back onto the desk next to him. He wishes he could have been there with her, whatever had happened, but part of him wonders if it was for the best. Sometimes it feels so much better to look back on all the eons.

"Reflective today, are we?" he asks, _you don't know the half of it_ answering him as her chest heaves only once. Instinct takes over as he clasps her hand and interlocks their fingers, feeling her press into him. "Hey, show me. I'd love to know more about your beginnings."

Smiling at him, she pushes a button on the device in her other hand with a limp arm. Instantly, there she is, as a child. Her temple is smashed up against the temple of another lass about her age, giggling and sticking their tongues out with an endearing abandon. Just being two cheeky adolescents, no hint of the Savior, but also no hint of the loneliness that's plagued her. She didn't look the part of an orphan here. She looked like she could be anyone's child.

Their child.

Stop, he tells himself, forcing himself to tear his eyes away from the sweet blonde girl and observe everything else.

"Who's that lass?"

"Just an old friend," she answers, barely audible, lip quivering. It's too easy to realize why she's shaken, yet another person who meant something to her...else why record the two of them just being together...and leaving her. Hands still clasped, he lifts his arm and wraps it around her. She lays her head down on him, going still, relaxing in his arms as he'd hoped she could do. The action almost seems to change the, the...footage. That's the right word. The screen darkens and awakens to the face of a chubby laughing boy a year or two older looking than Emma, sixteen, perhaps, and something tells him this was _not _a young girl's crush.

"Where's that?"

"I don't really remember," she says, the words broken up. He can see from the corner of his eye her squinting at the television, scanning it for some clue as to when this was. Understandable. He doesn't know how many times she was shuffled around from one residence to another, but if this world's foster care system was anything like the orphanages of the Enchanted Forest, the odds of finding a permanent home dwindled considerably once you were no longer a babe in arms.

"Maybe my next foster home?" she asks him. Still, it ought to look vaguely familiar, he thinks, second-guessing himself. It wasn't all that long ago she was fifteen years old.

"Blocked it out? Unpleasant time?" he suggests.

"I guess."

Perhaps they should shut it off. He knows he can't bare to see the laughing girl crying huddled in a corner as someone berates her or, worse, abuses her. His eyes linger on her neck for a second, searching for scars. Her hands, as beautiful as they are, boast burns, one even close to her flower tattoo on the inside of her wrist. And some blows don't end in a scar, he remembers. No, those end in making you feel like a pathetic shell of your former self. She doesn't need to relive any of that.

But the boy doesn't look abused. His clothes look clean and serviceable and, face facts, well-fed. Unless he was the one who had tortured her...

"Who's that? Another friend?"

"I don't remember any of this," she murmurs, just gaping at the screen. They should turn it off. Before, she knew what she was showing him...

The Emma in the screen reaches out for her machine, leaps for it, and the boy just laughs and wobbles the thing all over the place.

_"Give it back, Kevin!"_

He bolts up. The woman in the doorway between them... No, no, it can't be. It's a trick of the light, a bad angle...and it's not. It's unfortunately not. Regrettably not.

"Bloody hell, is that..."

"_The camera is Emma's, not yours. We respect property in this house, Emma."_

The Snow Queen nears them, her face so close, so familiar it threatens to claw its way out of the screen and stand right in front of them. Gawking, Emma hits a button that freezes the action on the television. It makes it worse.

"Yeah," she breathes.

"Turn it off. Emma, turn it off."

"What?" She rips her eyes from the screen and just stares at him, her bottom lip falling open as if he can explain this to her. Her eyelashes fluttering, she drifts back to the screen, her hand shaking as she brings the device with the buttons on it back up, but then she pushes something that sends everything on the screen whirling backwards in a disjointed frenzy.

"What are you doing?"

"No, no there has to be something on here that can explain this," she says to herself, standing up and watching the boy taunt her again.

"You can watch the same thirty seconds over again all night, but nothing on there is going to explain this," he says. Like addressing a wall. Standing up, he runs the backs of his fingers against her hairline. "Emma, love." He waits until she's focusing on him. "We will review it, but for right now, please, turn it off."

She manages to do so without breaking eye contact, the screen going mercifully blank. About to ask if she's all right when he knows she's not, she tilts up on her toes and kisses him with her fingers carding through his hair. Every thought flees from his mind, like a flock of birds taking off from their perch. Her tongue swirls around the inside of his mouth and he's just about lost, bombarded with one of her hands still rifling in his hair and the other flattened against his chest, pushing, pushing through with such force he's surprised his heart's still intact when she dips her mouth down to kiss his bottom lip as she takes in air.

"Minx," he pants, his forehead collapsing onto hers. "I was trying to comfort you."

"You are," she says, gazing up at him. Her eyes shine...pupils so dilated there's only a rim of the warm hazel-green color...but not from holding back tears. Cupping his face, she closes her eyes and steadies her breath. Her fingers slip down to his jaw as she comes back to reality with a sigh. "We have to get to the bottom of this."

He watches her maneuver around to the back of the desk they were sitting on. Licking his lips, he waits until his blood flow returns to normal. One day he'll tell her just what she does to him, that her magic _must _weave a spell over him. Not that he cares. He too comes back to reality with a sigh and turns to see her tapping a pen against a piece of paper.

She's drawn a line with little notches marked in, labeling them with names and numbers he deduces to be ages. Ah. Foster families. Where she was at ten, at seven, the most intriguing block the first one with a single word, "Swans," written next to it.

"This is the last place I remember," she says, flipping the paper over for him to see. "I remember it. I remember running away when Cecilia got adopted. She was so young... I was too old..." she trails off, leaning over more until her forearms bear her weight on the desk. "That's when I met Lily, on the tape."

"Short-lived friendship, I take it?"

"Very. She had..._everything _I wanted. She had someone to go after her. After that, after that it's a blank," she says. "The next thing I remember is being out on my own."

"You had your memories erased," he concludes. She'd been right. The Snow Queen had known her and, at some point, removed their problematic relationship from Swan's mind.

"But you gave me a potion to remember everything! And it worked!" He shakes his head.

"That potion would have only brought back the memories taken by Storybrooke disappearing. Everything else that happened to you was still there, which means that there was sometime _before _you went to New York that she would have done that to you." It's so bloody repulsive, altering these people's minds this way and that. He glances back at the television screen as if it's the enemy, as if it's the vile thing that violated her so.

"The ice cream shop," she groans. She shuffles through some of the files and glares at a photograph of her with the Snow Queen in Storybrooke clothes, as integrated into the town as if she'd always been here. He might have even passed her on the street one day; gods know he'd been too busy with his own nefarious deeds to pay attention to anyone else's.

"You're right. I, I can't do this right now," she stammers. Throwing on her jacket, she packs away her box of memories, the tape still in the box below the television. "I'll drop you off at Granny's and then just go home."

"We can devote as much time as we need to it tomorrow," he says, his hand floating in the space next to the small of her back as they go out the door and she locks up.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Here is where the timeline gets a little weird. The end of "The Apprentice" starts in the morning and "Breaking Glass" apparently starts in the evening as Will is rambling on about dinner and it gets dark soon after the action starts. However, everyone is in different clothes, which would imply it's the next day. By 4x6, all we know was that somewhere prior to that episode, Ingrid's shop and house were searched. So I had a choice to make. Option 1 was drawing out the narrative and somehow make two full days of file-reading a riveting read. Or Option 2—make it the same day and find reasons for the characters to have changed clothes by the time evening rolled round. I opted for the second. Coming up? An ominous looking ice cream truck.**


	13. Tainted Love

**A/N: Yes, I am aware that Will was not in the cell last night, but there were other things going on. Now is the time for certain parties to notice.**

* * *

><p>He'd woken with the sun and squeezed out the door of Granny's just as a horde of hungry patrons had been all but convulsing to get in. The crisp air bites extra hard on his neck and the backs of his ears, his imagination toying with the notion that the Snow Queen realizes she's been discovered.<p>

She must have wanted to be found at some point, he thinks, the cold streets and clicking of doors unlocking on the way to the sheriff's station the new background sensations in his life. Rubbing his hand across his face, he decides there can be no other explanation. Swan hadn't even heard of Storybrooke until she'd been twenty-eight, so for someone in her past to beat her to it and set up a shop fit the very definition of incredulous.

And said someone came here with every intention of finding her. There are too many holes for him to weave it all together into some kind of narrative. If only Elsa had her memories. That would help considerably.

David, Snow, Henry, and Elsa are already there, pacing around in various directions as Swan sits on the desk in the same position as last night looking down at her hands, looking more like a child that's done something wrong than anything else.

"Am I late?" he asks.

"Regina's on her way," she answers. She clasps the device that turns on the television and glances back at her parents, but she waits. He should offer to...something's missing. Stepping back until he's almost back outside the door, he scans his surroundings, stopping at the empty cell.

"Our thief seemed penitent enough to win his freedom then?" He gestures at the cell, only for Swan to bypass him and shoot a knowing look over at her mother. Now that he thinks about it, he's sure if the thief had been here last night, Swan's tape would have received bawdier commentary.

"Er, let's focus on the here and now, shall we?" Snow stammers, jostling the baby in her arms and, after placing the pacifier against his lips and waiting for him to take it, places him in his pram. Suits him fine, loathsome degenerate no longer anyone's problem. Feeling a presence next to him, he steps back out of the threshold for Regina, a lidded cup in her hand the only indication this stop had not been part of her original schedule...and Belle and the Dark One follow close behind her.

"What are you doing here?" he growls at him.

"I'm here as part of a consultation, as it were," Rumpelstiltskin says, leading Belle by the arm around him into the station.

"Emma called us and said it was important," Belle adds, shifting around both of them and giving Elsa a wary eye. What the bloody hell was that all about? Doesn't bat an eye at marrying the Dark One but enters the same room as Elsa with more than a little trepidation? True enough, magic can be off-putting to those without it, but he's never seen her recoil at Swan or even Regina, and the latter had kept her locked up in a prison cell. Lingering near the back of the room, he watches her stance change into something more confident, just behind Swan, hands on her hips, boasting a researcher's passion.

"Well, no time like the present," Swan mutters to herself. She plops into a chair and switches the tape back on.

_"Give it back, Kevin. The camera is Emma's, not yours."_

Such an indecipherable bitch, the Snow Queen. Pretending she's an ally to her and then going and trapping her and everyone else around here within the ice wall so she can start freezing people...

"Emma, that's you," Snow breathes. Her back to him, he doesn't need to see her face to know she's fighting back tears. "You must be..."

"Thirteen, maybe fourteen," she says quickly.

"Are you missing the part where she's with the Snow Queen?" Regina demands, ever the voice of reason, insistent, hotheaded, frank reason. "Emma, you knew her before you came to Storybrooke?"

"Apparently, my run-in with her in town wasn't the only memory she erased. All this time in this foster home, or whatever that place was—it's gone."

"I-I just don't understand how she even ended up in this world," Belle says with her hands out. Aye, that does put one in a quandary. Even stranger, if the Snow Queen that he had never even heard of hailed from the Enchanted Forest, how would she even know Swan in the first place? Few had known about the Dark Curse with enough time to make preparations, Cora even lucking into that information. Whispers of a Savior accompanied Cora's firm faith that the curse would break, but as to who it was supposed to be or even a name...his bet is that only the darkest of wizards may have been privy to that.

"We were hoping Gold could tell us that," Swan says, twisting around to face him. His thoughts exactly. "You spent more time trying to get here than anyone, so how the hell did she do it?"

"Considering the time I spent on the same task, I'd love to know."

He believes him. He hates it, but he believes him. That they had past dealings, that's certain, to be sure, but the Snow Queen had been astute enough to know not to involve the Dark One in her plans.

"Does it really matter how she got to Emma? I mean, shouldn't we be more concerned about why?" David asks.

"Obviously, she needed her for something," Regina thinks out loud. "But what?" Scoffing at herself, she almost shrugs. "Well, that's our _next _problem."

"Well, we know she's hiding somewhere in the north woods. We combed every inch of her shop. We tore apart her house...she must have cleared everything out days before."

Killian recalls how impersonal the house had been. Things there might have triggered a response out of Emma, but they neither seemed that out of place nor alluded to any grand schemes.

"Which means she must be hiding something," he says, swallowing, trying to take the list of what they already know and apply it to some theory or prediction.

"But where?" Swan addresses them.

"What about her ice cream truck?" Henry at last speaks up. Her what? He immediately banishes the image of a vessel made of ice cream and holds his thoughts steady until he hears more.

"Whoa, Snow Queen has an ice cream truck?" Swan asks.

"I'm a kid. I notice these kinds of things," he says with a shrug, blushing just a tad at Swan's proud smile and nod at him. Ought to deputize the lad now, would save everyone some time.

"Then we split up into groups," David announces, locked into his own sheriff mode. "We search the town, the woods—Hook, Regina, Emma—you take the west. Gold, you're with me for the east."

About to suggest they bring Henry along on this one, he stops at Rumpelstiltskin's protesting, some tripe about working best alone. Paling, he closes his eyes and wills the crocodile not to go back to the shop, not to pull him aside at some point in the day and reveal to him and only him some ulterior reason for staying out of everyone's sight. The "fun" he would try to coerce him to do...

"Belle, how are you at tracking?" David continues. Now would be the time to make eye contact, he thinks, his heart racing as it waits for Rumpelstiltskin to shift his gaze to him, make the silent demand for the two of them to meet up, but it never happens. Rather he keeps his eyes on his wife.

"Uh, actually, I-I think I'll be more helpful at the library. Maybe I can dig something up on the Snow Queen." David doesn't look the least bit put off by her quibbling, and it's true Belle has come through more than once with her research...

"I'd like to come with you, Belle, if that's okay," Elsa requests, gliding over to her from one of the desks. "Maybe something about my sister will be there, too."

Belle gawks at her, trying to downplay her horror at the idea. He follows Swan and Regina over to the station's armory, of sorts, in the alcove, but his eyes stay on her.

"Unless, you'd rather _not _have the company?" Elsa hesitates. Good. He's not the only one who finds this behavior inexplicable. Gods, she's married to the one person in this room with more magic than anyone, and deep prejudices don't just disappear in the bedroom...

"N-n-no. Not at all. I would love some," she says, making up for her hesitation with a smile, albeit not her usual warm one.

He's no stranger to dead smiles masking something just beneath the surface.

* * *

><p>Regina walks ahead of them, although not in an avoidant manner, more like just trying to hurry along the process. He had considered teasing her about how much better her pace is now than it was in Neverland, but this cordiality she seems to be extending them is a fragile thing. Instead, he and Swan bring up the rear and the look she gives him mirrors his—that a truck should be easy so easy to spot in the woods it's a wonder they haven't stumbled upon it yet.<p>

"You get the feeling we're just following a trail of breadcrumbs?" she asks, stuffing her hands into her pockets.

"I thought she worked in ice cream?"

"Figure of speech. It means like we're following a trail she's leaving us."

"You mean she wants us to find the truck," he concludes, running his tongue over his teeth in consideration. It all did seem to be cries for attention, but that's not the entire picture. "I would, save for the fact that she erased your memory. Why have you backtrack like this? If she's seeing it as you seeking her out, then you can only do so up until you find out why she made you forget her. Once you know why, it seems odd she would expect circumstances to change."

"Yeah, I—hold on." She drives her chin out to where Regina has stopped to talk on her phone, a hand on her hip.

"Yes. We will be in that direction. Thank you," Regina says curtly. Turning to them, she fans some hair out of her face and adjusts the collar of her coat. "That was Robin. He and his men have found a truck and wanted to report it to you," she addresses to the grove of trees to their left.

"Great. A lead. How many abandoned trucks are out in the woods, right?" Swan musters a smile at her and quickens her pace, pushing her hands down into her thighs as they trudge up an incline.

"You're on speaking terms," he notes.

"Yeah, a run-in with a Snow Queen will do that to you," she says, flashing him a smile between intakes of air. They're almost to the top of the small bluff where the Merry Men have their camp. He understands now her sudden nostalgia for her childhood box last night, if she and Regina had indeed buried the hatchet. Of course Swan would have a vitriolic relationship with a friend, he thinks, arching his eyebrows and smirking at her.

"What?" she challenges.

"Nothing. It's commendable you've reached out to her to be her friend. Gods knows she needs one... After this, I assume you two will be knocking on your parents' door and then running off laughing?"

"Shut up," she murmurs, rolling her eyes at him. She waves up at Robin, crossbow at the ready. Still too far away to discuss anything, Robin motions to them that he'll meet them up where they found the truck. He breathes a sigh that they have something to explore. It's pertinent to the investigation, and it's a worthwhile distraction from...but he won't think of all that right now.

"David, call off the search party," Swan orders from her phone. "We found the truck near the Merry Men's camp." A few more men with bows guard a dirt-streaked truck with branches and vines set up all around it...a rather stagey way of making it look like it had been out here forever. As per the Snow Queen's "look at me" strategy, he presumes. "Thanks for keeping an eye out."

"Gladly," Robin says, working his way into their party. "You're the first sheriff I don't mind assisting. "Uh, Regina, I was hoping we could talk..."

"Um, in case you haven't noticed, I'm about to storm an evil ice cream truck," she retorts just as he was hurrying up ahead to give them a moment alone. He stops instead, allowing Regina to speak to Swan if she wishes.

"You could have just said 'maybe later,'" she advises in a hushed voice.

"I know you're trying to make everything better, but staying out of it is your best bet."

He unleashes a silent laugh. Birds of a feather.

"It's bad enough I'm stuck with you and Captain Guyliner making eyes at each other."

"I don't make eyes," she mumbles. Oh, he _has _to take advantage of that. Curling his tongue, he sweeps up around and passes Swan.

"Ready, love?" From the corner of his eye, he watches her compose herself.

The truck itself is a great deal more spacious than her car, but a far cry from David's vessel, what he thought also was called a truck. That vessel's shape had been for hauling things in the back flat area. This truck resembles more a tiny kitchen, containers and shelves all over the place, an immaculate contrast from the grungy outward appearance. The emptiness, however, remains intact inside and out.

"It appears she beat us to it," he sighs, stepping up into the truck. "She's cleared out the vessel." Again, baiting and baiting Swan only to give her nothing of substance. He's half beginning to think the Snow Queen's just in love with her...

"What now? Should we question the cow she gets her milk from? Maybe search the waffle-cone factory?" Regina snaps at them. Raising an eyebrow and about to remind her they only arrived here at Henry's suggestion, Swan steps forward.

"Hang on. Look." She handles a lock on one of the massive strongbox things. "Who locks their freezer? Was she afraid someone was going to steal the rocky road?"

Freezer. Food storage. Well, no flying monkey's going to burst out of there any time soon.

"Stand back," he says. Lifting his arm, his hook smashes the lock and prepares for the worst...a little ice-made flying monkey, perhaps...

Inside lies a singlular file, similar to the ones he and Swan and Elsa and everyone else had been poring over as of late. She picks it up and freezes at the first paper stuffed into it. With a cock of her head, she channels the fear and confusion into anger.

"Looks like the dairy queen's bene following me for a _long _time," she says with some bite.

"Since before foster care?" Regina asks.

"Since I _landed _in this world." She holds out the paper for them to see. Protected in some transparent coating, his eyes skip the photograph on the top and burn holes into the bolded words "Seven Year Old Boy Finds Baby on Side of Road."

Ah. Drawing a breath, he steps out of the truck and waits along the back. They'd been led to this, that much is obvious. The Snow Queen's lock was a clue, not a barrier. Might as well have been a sign telling them to check it. She couldn't have had any way of knowing that Swan had already discovered they had had a past together, so she made sure to include that revelation in her plan, whatever it was.

And that worries him the most. No one knows what she wants. Emma's the first answer that comes to mind, but she'd _had _her. She could have kept the wall up and frozen Marian all to get closer to her, but she'd all but secured her as a child. And that didn't explain Anna's disappearance, or wiping away Elsa's memories.

"I, I'm just going to give you a moment alone," Regina says, stepping down out of the truck. Behind her, Swan stacks up the papers and reads over them with a pace so feverish her eyes dart from side to side.

"According to this, she was my foster parent for six months!"

"Aye?"

"That's the longest I was ever in one spot, but I don't remember a second of it!" She sits and starts dividing the papers into categories, but just gives up and stares down at the ones still in her lap.

"You all right, Swan?" he asks. His weight falls onto his knee as he positions his leg onto the edge of a fallen log.

"I'm fine. It was all a long time ago."

"Perhaps, but wounds that are made when we're young...tend to linger," he says, to himself as well as to her. Gods know there are details he knows would require the utmost privacy, countless deep breaths, and maybe a stiff drink in hand before he'd divulge them even to her...he doesn't know if those outnumber the details he wishes he knew.

"How would you know?" she tests him. It would be a rude question if her eyes didn't set just right, if her head tilted at any other angle, if he didn't know it was her way of furthering a subject she wasn't completely comfortable discussing.

"Believe it or not, I was once a child," he says, angling his head the same way. It will get easier, he reminds himself. It will go away—the hesitation that hits him hard when he has a chance to be open with her. Every time he does, the feeling is replaced by something so much better...but still.

"Yeah, like a million years ago," she scoffs.

"It was more like two hundred," he says, shuffling up and over the log to sit. He fights the urge to stare off into the trees and revisit those wounds, not now, and glances at the corners of the papers sticking out of the file. His eye catches one with her name on it at the same time her fingers do. She flips the page up to reveal a horizon line...soft streaks of turquoises and aquamarines meeting in the middle with flecks of pink, yellow, and green giving the suggestion of trees, flowers—a setting sun on the water. Not a stirring painting by any stretch, but one with some style, an eye for romanticism.

"What is it?"

"It's a painting I did when I was in school," she says, eyebrows coming together. She flips it up and over to examine what lies beneath it.

"That so surprising?"

"It's not the only one. This crazy woman has a whole file of my old art projects and essays...just like the one I have for Henry." She pauses, needing to look away for a minute. "You don't keep stuff like this unless you care about someone."

"Perhaps the Snow Queen wasn't simply using you. Perhaps she'd grown fond of you over time," he suggests. It happens. It feels worse when it should feel better. As long as the Snow Queen had been an admirerer from afar, as long as she'd obsessively collected everything about Emma and stayed indifferent to the real person, he could feel an end to this was in sight. But for the woman to love her, or at least develop such an attachment to her she assumed was love, there is suddenly an opened floodgate of worry. Whatever reasons the Snow Queen harbored for taking Anna, for having something to do trapping Elsa in the urn, for erasing Emma's memories, they had been more powerful than he'd thought. Even perceived love is difficult to trump.

"Looks like the feeling was mutual," she says, opening a greeting card so the splashy colors on the front give way to a mostly white canvas with the scratchy penmanship of a child on it. "'Thanks for being the family I never had. Love, Emma.' I wrote that. To her."

"Looks like you two were close once." There is a brief flicker of nausea on her face, but she shakes it out. It's becoming harder for her to step out of the case and be the impersonal sheriff, and he doesn't blame her in the least.

"But she still erased my memories. Something must have happened to change all that. There has to be a clue as to why."

He wouldn't bet on it, he thinks, staring down at the papers. The file may have started out as a parental shrine to her, but now it's only a clue as to what the Snow Queen _wants _her to see—the happy times, render her so sentimental she'll come rushing back to her not caring about what tore them apart in the first place.

A rolled-up piece of parchment snaps him out of his reverie, thick and yellowed. It's quite the contrast from the stark white schoolwork, he notices, taking hold of it. It's a scroll.

"Perhaps there is." They unroll it together, switching hands so hers steadies the top while he unfurls the bottom of it. "If you can read hieroglyphs."

That it's an alphabet, he's sure, and yet, from far away, it would look more like a row of stick figures and arrows, not a curved line among them. He dares to hope it's some sort of code the two of them had invented when she was younger, some...he cringes...mother-daughter way of becoming even closer, inventing something only they could understand.

"This isn't from our world," she breathes. "What the hell was she doing with me?"

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Coming up? As if Hook wasn't already freaked out by the Snow Queen...**


	14. Family Dysfunction

_"Step to, lad! You ought to have reached the top and touched back down before I could have even snagged one coconut!" he yells from the top of one of Neverland's tallest trees. His arms hanging over one of the limbs, he glances down and grins at Bae, not that far from stretching a leg to just the right place and wedging himself between the trunk and a sturdy branch._

_ "We do it next time, what will you give me?" he pants. Straddling a branch, he leans his back against the trunk. _

_ "Respect," Killian teases with a laugh. He reaches up and, with his hook, lets a coconut drop into his hand. He performs the now-memorized burrowing it takes to open one up and offers it to him. _

_ "Thanks."_

_ One can't see the whole island from the top...the flimsier branches obscure too much and shaking them into a new arrangement can be deafening...but the peaks of the mountains look closer than ever. The sparkles from a few freshwater springs glitter in the perpetual afternoon along with a mermaid tail or two. It's up here, with him, that he wonders if this revenge obsession is nothing more than a mistake, one he won't be able to work his way out of... Milah would surely prefer this, her two young men gazing at a landscape together, one she would have traded their last jewels for just pencils to sketch._

_ "So how does a sailor with a hook for a hand get to be a climber? It's not the kind of thing that seems to become you," Bae inquires after a long sip and swishing the milk around in his mouth._

_ "Nay, sailors have to be adept at climbing up the rigging. I would do it every chance I had. You see things more clearly, can interpret things better."_

_ "There's nothing to interpret. We're not talking about anything," he counters, squinting._

_ "Silence can be as easy to read as talk, lad, if you take the care to try."_

_ Bae laughs and offers the coconut back to him, his lopsided smile and big brown eyes melting something in him. It's melting the rage, he knows, looking away back at the mountains. He doesn't forget it's a hellish place; he just...it's so damn frightening at times to consider letting it all go._

_ "I like it up here. Just the two of us," Bae says. The silence adds something to it. "Like a family." _

_ It tugs at Killian's eyes at the same time his blackened heart longs to run away. It's too charred to truly love anyone now, and it's just as well. The boy speaks in ignorance. If he knew everything, he'd know just how impossible it would be to have the perfect family._

* * *

><p>Regina had wanted to walk back into town. Swan hadn't allowed it, wisely mentioning that such an action with a madwoman on the loose that had already attacked them once would be "asking for it," so she'd consented to being dropped back off at her vault.<p>

"Research is research," he says again as Swan unlocks the door to the sheriff's station and flips on the lights.

"Yeah, and when Pan got in there, he didn't leave with just research material," she scoffs, grimacing at the boxes of paperwork still all over the place. "I just don't think she works best alone."

"Let's hope Elsa and Belle have made some progress then, especially since their research site was a little more...conventional." Risking it, he sweeps behind her and wraps his arms around her, his chin on her shoulder. The back of her head leans back against his face, enticing him to close his eyes.

"I'm so tired of looking at all this crap," she murmurs, relaxing a little in his arms. "Want to just say 'screw it' and go get some cake?"

The sound of rushing footsteps down the corridor echoes into the room before he can agree. He banishes the notion of whisking both Swan and cake from Granny's into his room and bolting the door as Elsa marches in, hugging a tome to her chest.

"Emma, we have a problem."

"It's Storybrooke. We've got more of those than we've got...I don't know. I'm tired." She takes her jacket off and ties her back out of her way as Elsa sets the book onto the desk, opening it to the precise page she wants.

"What's this?" Swan asks her.

"It's a clue as to what this is all about. This is family business."

He raises his eyebrow at that.

"The Snow Queen—she's my aunt," Elsa sighs, a tensing of her shoulders indicating she's been fighting acknowledging it for a while.

"The Snow Queen is your aunt?"

"According to this heraldry book I found in the library," she says, nodding. She turns the book around so he and Swan can see it. "Her name is Ingrid. I didn't even know my mother had any sisters. I'm as surprised as you are."

"Spend a little more time in this town, love, you'll realize just about everyone's related," he quips. Really, it should have been their initial lead. Swan's silent laugh confirms it. Swan's foster mother, Elsa's aunt...no wonder the two of them have hit it off. By Storybrooke standards, they're practically sisters.

He steps up next to them and peers down at the book that does indeed smell like it came via the library. His eyes widen and he arches an eyebrow at the portrait in the middle, a strong, proud face in contrast to the demure ones of this Ingrid and the one on the bottom, the youngest sister. Her hair parted just the right way, pale buttery waves falling down her shoulders, the narrow, delicate features—she's not quite a duplicate of Emma, but there is more than a passing similarity.

"This book traces the lineage in Arendelle for generations. That's Gerda, my mother, and this is Helga, my other aunt." Her fingertips linger on the middle portrait.

"Bloody hell, look at this one. She looks just like you." The swift terror overcoming her face as she snaps her head back down at the portrait drives him to thinking out loud. "Maybe that's why she was so obsessed with you, why she kept all those relics from your childhood."

Elsa abandons the heraldry book to pick up the scroll, but he finds himself not asking her to translate the text. It's far easier for his mind to contemplate a chilling fantasy of this woman _replacing _her sister. With Emma.

"She came to this world looking for blondes? There's a lot more than just me," Swan argues. He could have told her that. New York alone harbored so many it was a bloody wonder he hadn't run up to each back shouting her name.

"Don't I know it?" He does so like ruffling her feathers, that faux-shocked look breaking both of them out of their morbid minds for a split second.

"She wasn't looking for a blonde. She was looking for the Savior," Elsa gasps, the scroll completely unrolled and in her hands.

"What?"

"This scroll. The writing is Runic . It's a prophecy. It says, 'The name of the Savior is Emma.'"

"She knew?" Swan breathes.

"Before you even did. She knew you were powerful."

"But why?" she asks him, and, again, he wishes he had an answer. Power, perhaps. That is the default answer, but it's more than that. This Ingrid woman has made it all too clear it's more than that.

"It says right here," Elsa continues. "'And the Savior shall become...Ingrid's sister.'" She flushes, batting her eyelashes as if they can block out the information.

"What the hell does that mean?" Swan demands.

"Well, my mother died, and her other sister—she's not around anymore. I think Ingrid _believes _in this prophecy. I think she's looking to replace them."

They should have all jumped at the door opening and Belle marching toward them with tear-stained cheeks, but they can't move, not until Belle utters a small, weak "Elsa." Replacing her sisters with Emma and Elsa. How? Take them? Spirit her away in some blizzard while he can do nothing but stand there and watch?

"I am so, _so _sorry, but-"

"What?" Blinking his way out of his fears, he notices she's taken Elsa's hands.

"I-I've been keeping a secret. I know your sister, Anna." She ignores the elated expression on Elsa's face, which can't be a good sign. "She helped me once, but when I had a chance to help her, I let her down, and because I did, she was captured by the Snow Queen."

"What?" Elsa snaps, a cold fury taking over her face...but no ice walls, no snow monsters. Not even a sprinkling of flurries. "Where did this happen? When?"

"Arendelle, a long, long time ago, and I have no idea where she is now." Swan looks about ready to pound her fist into the desk at the constant head-shaking going on. The trail literally going cold before they could even begin to traverse it. "But, uh, I'm afraid we have a more pressing concern."

She takes a breath, rounding her mouth to steady herself.

"The Snow Queen has a mirror, imbued with terrible magic that can do _terrible _things."

He's had enough. Too many foreign folktales...and, sadly, too many real instances...of mirrors used to travel, mirrors used to spy, mirrors used to remember, forget, bloody rule worlds.

"A mirror? Easy enough, let's just go smash it," he says, mustering a shrug.

"It's not that simple," Belle argues. "Rumple told me it's part of an awful spell—the spell of Shattered Sight."

He's never heard of it and he's sure his unchanging expression is adding to Swan's frustrations.

"If she casts it, its magic will make everyone in Storybrooke turn on one another."

And there's the how...and it's not at all comforting to know it.

"Bloody hell, the entire town will destroy itself," he nearly gasps at the simplicity of it. No blizzards, no freezing people slowly over time, just—kill them all off, except for the two she wanted kept alive.

"And there'd be no one left," Belle finishes.

"Except us," she says, turning to Elsa, who nods, swallowing hard.

"What makes you think she'd spare you and Elsa?" Belle asks.

"Because of this," Swan sighs, her fingers barely tracing the family tree in the book.

"She wants it to be just the three of us."

"Her perfect family." Swan kicks out the chair and rushes into it, her palms finding their way into her forehead, kneading it. He can't let yet another curse separate her from her family, worse this time because she has Henry. The boy would have nowhere to hide, all the people he trusts suddenly hounding him out and ready to pounce at the slightest sensation. His grandparents devolved into a swordsman and an archer, one of his mothers more than capable of inflicting her own reign of terror on everyone...and it would only take a relentless scrape across his throat with a hook...

"Let me see that?" Belle leans over the book with her hands on her hips, brow furrowed. Exhaling, she looks back up. "Well, what do we know about the Snow Queen?"

"She's fucking insane," Swan blurts out.

"Her powers are like mine, only stronger," Elsa offers, sidestepping until she can place a hand on Swan's shoulder. "We've seen her manage to keep the ice wall up, freeze someone, conjure up beings that can pass for people..." she trails off, shuddering. Then, she looks over at him. "And she can cancel out other people's magic."

"She said she had done that to you the day we tracked her," he says, nodding at her. "If she can learn that, you can learn that. Both of you could."

Swan's eyes dart to and fro, not focusing on anything except something she's weaving in her mind. All he can read is her pushing out the books they'd found at her house, the motherly way she calls out her name.

"I'll unlock the pawn shop. I know exactly what we need that neutralizes magic," Belle says, smiling, beaming, rather. "It's, it's a candle. I'd have to translate the instructions, but there's a book with its picture in it and the words next to it have to be a description! Elsa, Elsa, I promise you I will do everything in my power to make sure you and Anna are reunited. This is my fault, but I think I can fix it. Just, just give me a few hours and I can have it all to you by morning."

"We aren't going to put everything on hold until morning," Swan finally says, her head falling back into the air. "It's not enough to know how to capture her. We have to know where she is to do it."

"Rest easy on that, love. She's made a rather sordid pattern of letting you two know where she is when she wants," he says.

"Yeah, and I'm sick of it. We find her, on our terms, before she can cast this Shattered Sight spell. Belle, what does she need to be able to cast it? Please don't tell me someone's firstborn child or a human heart."

"Everything I've seen on it is very vague. A mirror needs to be pieced together, with what, I don't know beyond shards of glass, and it always mentions the 'harmony of three magical sisters' or something like that."

"I have a feeling Ingrid has set things into motion so she doesn't have to rely on us getting along harmoniously with her," Elsa mutters, folding her arms. Closing her eyes for a moment, she lets her arms fall to her sides and straightens her back. "Learning the neutralizing spell is the first step. When and if she wants to make her presence known to us, we'll be ready. Emma, we can practice it here. It's a much bigger space than your parents' apartment and we don't know the extent of the damage it can do, do we?" she asks Belle.

It all sounds as though it's coming together, but glancing down at Swan, still seated, doesn't incite him to hope. Her lips tight, she holds one of her hands in the other, turning it over and inspecting it, like a fortune teller.

"Swan?" he asks, kneeling down. "Swan, what's on your mind, love?" He knows most of it—being the object of an unhinged, magical woman's affections has the tendency to put one on edge, but there is something else, something that seems to cut even deeper. Opening his mouth to ask again and break her out of her trance, she stands up.

"She already had me. I was, for all intents and purposes, her _kid. _For six months. So what happened, she only wanted me if I could do magic?"

The lights above them begin to flicker, slowly, almost hesitantly at first, but then so rapidly it could induce a headache if it stays that way. Then, as she lets out a breath, they stop.

It cuts deeper indeed if she's grouping the Snow Queen in with all of those she trusted, loved, who left her. He won't argue with her now; she'll just seal herself back up if he does now, but it gives him a sinking feeling that the Snow Queen has taken this into account. If anyone tries to take her where she doesn't wish to go, they'll have to go through him first. Sword, hook, and heart belong to her as much as if she held them all in her hands.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: I threw a _10th Kingdom _reference in this chapter. See if you can spot it. Coming up? Catching the Snow Queen is a team effort.**


	15. Pawns

David and Snow had upended their apartment into the headquarters of a battlefield within the span of a night. The news of the Snow Queen's plans had frozen their faces into expressions of pure terror for a split second before they began...he'll call it banter, albeit a very no-nonsense banter, a back-and-forth dialogue only the two of them seem to fully understand. One will talk and the other will build upon the idea and the whole thing becomes a volley of connection until they draw a conclusion.

Snow packs up Neal quicker than he'd ever seen her before, the pram, the bottles, the bag of supplies that bulges more by the day and yet never explodes, and sets off for the mayor's office for an "emergency broadcast."

"A what?"

"You can televise a message for everyone to see on their TVs at home, a mayoral privilege," Snow says with a bit of a lilt in her voice. "We can post the photo Sidney took of her and Emma and then everyone in town will know who we're looking for and can report to us if they see her."

"Will it work?" He leans with his elbow on their counter, too familiar with the expression that answers him.

"It's a long shot, but one of the reasons the Snow Queen's gotten away with all this is that she's given everyone distractions. The ice wall, Marian—now she's got the spotlight on her and someone will be bound to see her."

He supposes that extends to the woods as more than a few denizens of Storybrooke prefer the more rustic way of life similar to the Enchanted Forest, and he feels filthy for even trying to slip into the Snow Queen's head, but if her endgame is some paradise reserved for only herself, Swan, and Elsa, she has to have a destination in mind. One doesn't isolate two women into sisterhood and then ask _them _where to live...

"Come on. You're with me," David says, tossing him his jacket. He has his keys ready, which means a trip in the truck.

"Where to?"

"Rounding up dwarfs and werewolves for what they do best."

* * *

><p>At eleven o'clock at night, there is no movement at the town line, just as there wasn't any at ten. In fact, the most boisterous event of the night so far had been Leroy grabbing his ax off the wall and bellowing on about making an ice sculpture out of Ingrid's face. Sad day when he and Leroy share the same sentiment.<p>

Ruby had given David a tight embrace on her way out of the diner before sprinting off in the direction of the woods, her form hunching over and growing bulkier in the dark. Her howl echoed through the night. At least Killian was sure if she did find anything, she would be able to let them know.

The truck sat, "parked," in the shadows of the trees off the road, and had been doing so for two hours straight on the off-chance the Snow Queen needed to place herself there for any reason. It stood to reason, the place being a magical hub, but he saw out of the corner of his eye that David's posture mirroring his own this would be to no avail.

"Bet you don't have many stake-outs under your belt," David breathes into the dark, making an effort to try to find something out past the windshield.

"Pirates plot their course and go, mate. Waiting for the opposition to come to them would be counterproductive." It strikes him that a prince normally wouldn't be accustomed to it either, but he refrains.

"We staged a trap for Regina once, Snow and I. It felt like we were waiting all night until she showed up, and then Snow and Blue played their parts and we had her. Just like that. All the waiting, all those empty hours—it was like they were gone from our memory."

"A feeling you're all too familiar with now," he digs.

"You could at least play along, Hook, you know, actually _add _to the conversation so it doesn't feel like we're just sitting here doing nothing while the whole town's at stake, not to mention my daughter."

Ah. He should have known how potent a distraction repartee could be. Gods, had it really come down to this, sitting in a truck hoping to catch a glimpse of such a threat? Swallowing, he rolls his tongue into the roof of his mouth and runs his fingers over the glass next to him.

"Is that what you want to discuss?" he asks. He casts his eyes down, but the pirate in him sweeps them in David's direction to gauge his response. Nostrils flaring, his head bent...like being in Neverland with him all over again.

"Emma's spending the night at the station with Elsa."

"Waiting on Belle to give them the neutralizing spell," he finishes.

"Snow and I asked her to watch Neal tomorrow. I'm not sure if she wanted to do it or if she wanted to want to do it."

He's clearly going somewhere with this, Killian thinks, or he should be. Staying silent, he lets his hand fall back down from the glass, waiting for the thought to finish itself.

"She's too close to this, this...I don't even know what to call it. It's not an investigation, and it's sure as hell not a case, not anymore. We both thought she could use a few hours to step away from it, and if she's with Neal, _we _can do something. We can contribute. We can..." His head slumps backward into the back of the seat. "We can actually protect her."

He needs to answer, so he flexes his jaw, the wording crucial to the rest of the night's mood.

"Emma feels the most protected when she's the one doing the protecting," he says. "At least some of it."

"Yeah, but this woman, this woman's thrown her for a loop. You can see it. It's, it's doing things to her head." He shakes his head. "We can't help her if we're always at home with feedings, and changings, and rocking...and it's not that that stuff's not important..." he trails off and rubs his eyes.

Killian shifts his head around and stares at him. There truly are times when the family seems to be a veritable hive rather than made up of individuals. He wonders if Swan and her father ever think about that.

"I thought, I thought working together would help me get to know her," David mutters.

"She loves you," he says.

"Which sometimes just means she's scared we'll abandon her."

* * *

><p>Two in the morning equates to a stop at Granny's for provisions, blocking out the woman's pleas for the two of them to call it a night disguised as complaining.<p>

"If you drink up all the coffee now, there won't be anything for the customers...four hours from now, and Ruby and I'll be out of work and that is on _you_, David!"

She's not fooling anyone. For one thing, they're all too worn out to pay that much attention, and two, she's patrolling her kitchen with her crossbow. David all but collapses into a booth to drink his coffee, and so, blinking every half second, he dashes up to his room for a shower.

He doesn't remember running the hot water or gathering towels and washcloths or even undressing, nothing registering until he leans his head back and lets the water douse his face, mat down his hair. Closing his eyes, he knows he isn't really one who can fall asleep standing up, but tonight his body just might make an exception. The lowered lights, the steam, the rest of the world on the other side of the curtain...

"Hook! Hook?"

A steady rapping on the room's door brings him back to some semblance of alertness. Turning the knobs that make the water disappear, he towels off and throws his clothes back on, hoping. Just hoping it's someone to report the Snow Queen's been sighted. It's a woman's voice, not Swan's or her mother's or Regina's...

"Belle?"

Her hair loose and as unkempt as it had been in Regina's prison cell, she holds a book out between them with one hand and rubs her eye with the other.

"I've been trying to find more on the Shattered Sight spell and, well, you see this illustration?"

It burns his eyes to focus on a watercolor mirror off-center on the page, but he does so. A series of white curls seem to orbit around the circular looking glass, making the mirror wide enough to rival his arms spread out. Raising an eyebrow at it, he looks back up at her.

"I think we're agreed it's a mirror?"

"It's the only thing I've been able to find and, well..." She blushes, and he knows it has nothing to do with the fact his hair and the tip of his nose are still drenched, or that his shirt is only buttoned halfway. Pursing her lips, she shakes her head at herself. "This particular language isn't my strong suit. I was wondering..."

He picks it up and adjusts it until the script, inked in blue with more than enough flourish, clarifies itself for him. Elvish. He'd translated a little bit of it in the pawn shop, back when they had only just discovered Zelena's identity, but it could come back to him if he sat down with it and followed the words with his fingers.

"We can take it downstairs where the light's better," he suggests. "Why didn't you just ask your husband to translate it for you?"

"He's...indisposed, at the moment," she says to the stained-glass window at the end of the hall. He nods, not caring if it looks knowing. Duplicitous cur, probably off plotting with the Snow Queen right now...dealing with all their lives as callously as if it were a chess game...

"What?" she asks him, eyebrows narrowing.

"What's he doing at this hour?" he asks back, shrugging. Open your eyes, lass, he wills her.

"Working, like everyone is. I _had _heard you were making yourself useful...so I was a bit put off to find you bathing, of all things."

"Perhaps an attempt to seduce the Snow Queen. I'm led to believe she's rather lonely, and _this_ doesn't just happen," he chides, gesturing at his chest down to his legs. Belle rolls her eyes. "Now, if you'll kindly let me lock the door to my own room, I shall be more than happy to accompany you downstairs and we can see what the book says about the mirror, hmm?"

* * *

><p>Eight in the morning. He stands with his back against the library exterior, arms folded. The book Belle had brought last night...early this morning...had been a dead end, a comparison to another mirror of legend that was probably real, one that acted as a portal to Wonderland. Why anyone would want to go there remains a mystery to him. Granny had opened the diner up to the usual crowd, Leroy and the dwarfs smudged and sweaty from pacing around in the woods all night. They'd screamed for bacon and eggs, and ham, and toast, and sausage—Killian had excused himself to get some air.<p>

Actually, he'd packed up some of the food before it could be inhaled and spooned it into some white containers, "styrofoam," and taken it to the sheriff's station. Swan and Elsa had moved desks around and pushed the boxes of paperwork up against the wall and even onto the cots in the jail cells to...well, he didn't know how to describe it...cross a stream of ice chunks with one of hot, concentrated light. Much to their disappointment, and his, magical ice and heat meeting do the same thing that regular ice and heat do when they meet. He'd volunteered to find a mop for them, but his phone rang.

"Go ahead," Swan had prompted him, bent over in a closet and throwing out a bucket.

"It's not you and it's not Henry," he'd said, hating the helplessness in his tone.

"That's when you say 'hello' and tell the salesguy you're not interested," she had said. "Thank you for breakfast."

Taking her advice had been what led him here, David following up on some lead about the Snow Queen walking through town.

He's walked the same route over and over again, certain if he keeps going he'll form a trench right here in the street. All this down time, the Snow Queen refusing to meet them before she's ready, prompts his thoughts to twist into hypotheticals and abstracts. When she was finally caught, and she _will _be caught, it will be rather like being thrown from the frying pan into the fire. Perhaps it's only because Ingrid is not Pan or Zelena, but the crocodile doesn't seem to feel threatened by her presence, which means his days and nights are free to scheme away while everyone else scatters themselves about. Just what will he have planned for him once this is all over?

Nothing, he decides. To hell with this stewing. In a matter of days, a snow monster, an ice wall, and a thief half as clever as he thinks he is have come their way and he's worried Swan won't take him at his word? If he speaks to her first, if he can just take that breath and be honest with her, something can be salvaged...although he's not sure what that is. His fingers play with the rim of his belt as he rolls his tongue. It did always make him feel better to be open with her, and she deserves nothing less...

His boots slide out from under him, his arm jerking out and bracing the exterior of the library the only thing keeping him from thudding to the ground. Ice.

"David," he calls to him from the opposite end of the street. David hustles around a few cars and skids to a stop before hitting the narrow ice trail. It doesn't matter how she wound up in the library, the door unlocked and the trail going all the way up to the clocktower. All that matters is that she can be cornered. "Call Emma."

* * *

><p>It looks like the mirror in the book, illuminated and everything. Belle had said it could do terrible things and the Snow Queen had been preoccupied with it before Swan and Elsa had come running with the candle to capture her.<p>

"We don't exactly have a lot of information on this thing," David says, folding his arms and looking at the mirror only out of the corner of his eye. "If we break it, is that the Shattered Sight spell? The shards would go flying toward everyone?"

"No idea, mate." Holding his breath, he brings his forehead up and meets his reflection. He swallows and waits. He waits for murderous thoughts, unnatural thoughts, to invade his brain. If it affects him, they'll have a starting point, a baseline. "I don't feel any different," he says after a beat.

"No need to make yourself the guinea pig. Here." David hands him his gun. "Now you've got that and a hook against bare hands." Weaving around him, David looks into the mirror and Killian keeps one eye on the reflection and the other on David himself. His posture doesn't change, his expression one of confusion and frustration, not ire.

"Any discoveries?" the hear resounding from the stairwell. Elsa climbs up toward them, her hand hovering over the rail.

"Not yet. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the station?" David answers.

"Well, Emma seemed to think I would be of better use here...that, and I felt my temper rising so high because of that woman I could have frozen the entire station," she adds, huddling into herself for a brief second before craning her neck at the mirror. She approaches it with slow deliberate steps, like nearing a wild animal. Her movements stay fluid even as she reaches out with her arm and brushes the glass with her fingertips.

"Can you freeze it?" he tries. Perhaps with harsh frost patterns over the glass, the magic won't work. Standing back, Elsa lifts her arms and turns her wrists outward. She bends and brings her arms down in front of her.

"Ingrid's thought of that," she sighs. "Have you tried looking into it at the same time? Maybe any hostilities two people harbor against each other is what triggers it."

"I'm afraid you'll need two other 'guinea pigs' for that one, love. The Prince and I get along so well it bloody well scares us, doesn't it?" He flashes a grin at David, who rolls his eyes. With his eyes, he dips his head in the direction of the mirror for them to try. He would laugh at the incredulous face staring back at him if he wasn't so damned tired. "Come on then, mate. Frightened of a little animosity?"

"Give me back my gun."

They step up to the mirror together, Elsa wavering back into the recesses of the tower, her arms locked. Ready to freeze them should things get out of hand, he surmises. A silent count of three, and he comes face-to-face with himself again. Elsa's sound of disappointment doesn't exactly go unheeded. She returns to the mirror's glow and begins examining it.

"This is what we've been worried about?" he asks. "Shouldn't it be shaking or doing something evil?"

"Agreed. It feels like just a harmless looking glass to me," Elsa concurs, placing her hands on her hips.

"I've found nothing to counteract the spell yet—hey, stop!" Belle jerks his arm back away from the mirror so fast it takes him a moment to register she must have come up the steps to meet them. "Do _not _look in that thing! It'll make you see the worst in yourself!"

So that's how it works, what he should feel. He raises his eyebrow. He knows precisely what those kinds of thoughts sound like, how much of a disappointment he'd turned out to be, how every time he tried to do something right it only felt like he was slipping further away from some image of himself that seemed to grow more and more unattainable...how no matter how much he loved, gave, did—his actions mean nothing in the long run.

But he can look away. The thoughts fails to consume him. Problems, he may have, but suddenly deciding to go out on a killing spree isn't one of them.

"It must be broken. I've been staring at it all day and I think I'm even more devilishly handsome and charming than usual."

Belle's body can't seem to decide whether it wants to scoff, laugh, or shriek at him so it rocks back and forth between him and the mirror, the mirror winning. "Th-this isn't the same mirror," she gasps, marching toward it without fear now. Her face in the dead center of it, she's sure.

"Why would the Snow Queen risk coming all the way out here to plant a fake mirror?" Elsa wonders. Because the only thing she obsesses more about than the woman he loves is herself, staying hidden unless she's sure the objects of her "affections" will pay her their undivided attention...like being all alone with her at the sheriff's station. His head snaps toward David.

"Because she wanted to get caught," David breathes. He holds his phone up at first, but brings it back down. "Belle, how long do the effects of the candle last?"

"There's no set limit mentioned anywhere, but there's a word of caution along with it, which I would take to mean not long."

He'll pay the price. Whatever monstrous act the crocodile wants him to do. He bolts down the steps.

"You can't go to the station alone! You'll be defenseless!" David shouts, hurrying down after him with the ladies on his heels.

"We won't go alone! If she's asserting her husband's working as hard as everyone else, then he'll be more than willing to offer up his magic, won't he?" he demands, pointing at Belle, who freezes midstep. "The Snow Queen's prevented Elsa from using her magic before, but no such power exists to do that to the Dark One, is there?"

"He'll help," is all she says, avoiding his glare and looking to David.

"Elsa, be ready just the same," David says, nodding to her. He passes Killian on the stairs, his hand patting the back of his jacket on the way down. The pawn shop isn't far, a dash across the street and up the sidewalk will do the job, but David takes off for the station. About to call after him, he stops and sees he's gotten no further than the door.

"Iced. Damn it!" David cries.

Killian rolls his eyes at him and continues for the dusty cluttered hellhole where it feels as if the crocodile will be waiting for them. Of course, of _course _the Snow Queen had thought to do something to the doors. She's alone with Emma, what she's wanted all along. David sidles up next to him and they about slam the bell into the glass, they burst through the door so intensely.

"Ah, this kind of procession never bodes well," Rumpelstiltskin sings to himself. David comes right to the point, haste being the goal here.

"The Snow Queen iced over the locks of the sheriff's station. Emma's trapped inside with her."

"We need your help, Rumple. You must be able to get us in there," Belle adds, leaning over the counter while the Dark One, her husband, stands straight...no reaction to her stress, no change in face as she murmurs "please" to him, not even realizing she's begging.

"How could I turn down the pleas of my beloved wife?" he asks, looking past her at him. Bloody monster. He has no reason to fear the Snow Queen. The same man had tearfully bid the same woman goodbye when Pan had been just inches away from her, and now Belle was heading right towards this madwoman and he could hardly be bothered. His "after you" is so lax it nauseates him. Killian waits until the others hurry themselves out. Too many scenarios run through his head, but they all stem from the same point—a deal. There is no other explanation. The Dark One and the Snow Queen have made a deal or he is holding out for one.

"All right, crocodile, what's your game? The last two villains that came into town tried to kill you, but you seem rather unconcerned by this one. Makes a man wonder if you two have a history."

Rumpelstiltskin's face at last changes to a hateful glare, downright murderous if they had time to spare.

"You can wonder all you like, dearie. My history. My business." He waits, signalling to Killian that if they really do consider his help essential, he'll go first. Coward. As he steers himself toward the door without looking back at him, he focuses on the sheriff's station. It would almost be worth a little magical anomaly of some kind just to rile Rumpelstiltskin up.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: With 4x12 airing so soon we can all almost taste it (yay!), it is possible updates may be slower. They shouldn't because I'm always a little ahead of what I post and I pace things out a certain way. I'm just saying things _could _slow down depending on the show's pacing. Coming up? An exchange between Snow and Charming I've wanted to do for awhile (and one I want Hook and Elsa to hear).**


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